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BOOK FIRST
THE DREAM

CHAPTER I
THE SYSTEM

TOWARD the close of a
May afternoon in the year
1884, Miss Priscilla Batte, having learned by heart the
lesson in physical geography she would teach her senior
class on the morrow, stood feeding her canary on the little
square porch of the Dinwiddie Academy for Young
Ladies. The day had been hot, and the fitful wind, which
had risen in the direction of the river, was just beginning to
blow in soft gusts under the old mulberry trees in the street,
and to scatter the loosened petals of syringa blossoms in a
flowery snow over the grass. For a moment Miss Priscilla
turned her flushed face to the scented air, while her eyes
rested lovingly on the narrow walk, edged with pointed
bricks and bordered by cowslips and wallflowers, which
led through the short garden to the three stone steps and
the tall iron gate. She was a shapeless yet majestic woman
of some fifty years, with a large mottled face in which a
steadfast expression of gentle obstinacy appeared to
underly the more evanescent ripples of thought or of
emotion. Her severe black silk gown, to which she had just
changed from her morning dress of alpaca, was softened
under her full double chin by a knot of lace and a cameo
brooch bearing the helmeted profile of Pallas Athene. On
her head she wore a three-cornered cap trimmed with

a ruching of organdie, and beneath it her thin gray
hair still showed a gleam of faded yellow in the sunlight.
She had never been handsome, but her prodigious size had
endowed her with an impressiveness which had passed in her
youth, and among an indulgent people, for beauty. Only
in the last few years had her fleshiness, due to rich food
which she could not resist and to lack of exercise for
which she had an instinctive aversion, begun seriously
to inconvenience her.

Beyond the wire cage, in which the canary spent his involuntarily
celibate life, an ancient microphylla rose-bush, with a
single imperfect bud blooming ahead of summer amid its glossy
foliage, clambered over a green lattice to the gabled pediment
of the porch, while the delicate shadows of the leaves rippled
like lace-work on the gravel below. In the miniature garden,
where the small spring blossoms strayed from the prim
beds into the long feathery grasses, there were syringa
bushes, a little overblown; crape-myrtles not yet in bud;
a holly tree veiled in bright green near the iron fence;
a flowering almond shrub in late bloom against the shaded side of
the house; and where a west wing put out on the left, a
bower of red and white roses was steeped now in the faint
sunshine. At the foot of the three steps ran the sunken
moss-edged bricks of High Street, and across High Street there
floated, like wind-blown flowers, the figures of Susan
Treadwell and Virginia Pendleton.

Opening the rusty gate, the
two girls tripped with carefully held flounces up the stone
steps and between the cowslips and wallflowers that bordered
the walk. Their white lawn dresses were made with the close-fitting

sleeves and the narrow waists of the period, and
their elaborately draped overskirts were looped on the
left with graduated bows of light blue ottoman ribbon.
They wore no hats, and Virginia, who was the shorter of
the two, had fastened a Jacqueminot rose in the thick
dark braid which was wound in a wreath about her head.
Above her arched black eyebrows, which lent an expression of
surprise and animation to her vivid oval face, her hair was
parted, after an earlier fashion, under its plaited crown, and
allowed to break in a mist of little curls over her temples. Even in
repose there was a joyousness in her look which seemed less
the effect of an inward gaiety of mind than of some happy
outward accident of form and colour. Her eyes, very far apart and
set in black lashes, were of a deep soft blue - the
blue of wild hyacinths after rain. By her eyes, and by an
old-world charm of personality which she exhaled like a
perfume, it was easy to discern that she embodied the
feminine ideal of the ages. To look at her was to think
inevitably of love. For that end, obedient to the
powers of Life, the centuries had formed and coloured her,
as they had formed and coloured the wild rose with its whorl of
delicate petals. The air of a spoiled beauty which rested not
ungracefully upon her was sweetened by her expression of natural
simplicity and goodness.

For an instant she stood listening in
silence to the querulous pipes of the bird and the earnest
exhortations of the teacher on the joys of cage life for both
bird and lady. Then plucking the solitary early bud from the
microphylla rose-bush, she tossed it over the railing of the
porch on the large and placid bosom of Miss Priscilla.

"Do leave Dicky alone for a minute!" she called in a winning
soprano voice.

At the sound, Miss Priscilla dropped the bit
of cake she held, and turned to lean delightedly over the walk,
while her face beamed like a beneficent moon through the shining
cloud of rose-leaves.

"Why, Jinny, I hadn't any idea that you and
Susan were
there!"

Her smile included Virginia's companion, a tall,
rather heavy girl, with intelligent grey eyes and fair hair cut
inn a straight fringe across her forehead. She was the daughter of
Cyrus Treadwell, the wealthiest and therefore the most prominent
citizen of the town, and she was also as intellectual as the early
eighties and the twenty-one thousand inhabitants of Dinwiddie
permitted a woman to be. Her friendship for Virginia had
been one of those swift and absorbing emotions which come to
women in their school-days. The stronger of the two, she
dominated the other, as she dominated every person or situation
in life, not by charm, but by the force of an energetic and capable
mind. Though her dress matched Virginia's in every detail, from the
soft folds of tulle at the neck to the fancy striped stockings under
the bouffant draperies, the different shapes of the wearers gave to
the one gown an air of decorous composure and to the other a quaint
and appealing grace. Flushed, ardent, expectant, both girls stood now
at the beginning of womanhood. Life was theirs; it belonged to them,
this veiled, radiant thing that was approaching. Nothing wonderful
had come as yet - but to-morrow, the day after, or next year, the
miracle would happen, and everything would be different! Experience

floated in a luminous mystery before them, The unknown, which
had borrowed the sweetness and the colour of their illusions,
possessed them like a secret ecstasy and shone, in spite of their
shyness, in their startled and joyous look.

"Father asked me to take a message over to General Goode," explained
Virginia, with a little laugh as gay as the song of a bird, "but
I couldn't go by without thanking you for the cherry bounce. I made
mother drink some of it before dinner, and it almost gave her
an appetite."

"I knew it was what she needed," answered Miss Priscilla,
showing her pleasure by an increasing beam. "It was made
right here in the house, and there's nothing better in
the world, my poor mother used to say, to keep you
from running down in the spring. But why can't you and
Susan come in and sit a while?"

"We'll be straight back in a minute," replied Susan before Virginia
could answer. "I've got a piece of news I want to tell you before any
one else does. Oliver came home last night."

"Oliver?" repeated Miss Priscilla, a little perplexed. "You
don't mean the son of your uncle Henry, who went out to Australia?
I thought your father had washed his hands of him because he had
started play-acting or something?" Curiosity, that devouring
passion of the middle-aged, worked in her breast, and her
placid face grew almost intense in expression.

"Yes, that's the one," replied Susan. "They went to Australia
when Oliver was ten years old, and he's now twenty-two. He lost
both his parents about three years ago," she added.

"I know. His mother was my cousin," returned Miss Priscilla.
"I lost sight of her after she left Dinwiddie, but somebody
was telling me the other day that Henry's investments all
turned out badly and they came down to real poverty. Sarah
Jane was a pretty girl and I was always very fond of her, but
she was one of the improvident sort that couldn't make two ends
meet without tying them into a bowknot."

"Then Oliver must be just like her. After his mother's death he
went to Germany to study, and he gave away the little money he
had to some student he found starving there in a garret."

"That was generous," commented Miss Priscilla thoughtfully, "but
I should hardly call it sensible. I hope some day, Jinny, that
your father will tell us in a sermon whether there is biblical
sanction for immoderate generosity or not."

"But what does he say?" asked Virginia softly, meaning not the
rector, but the immoderate young man.

"Oh, Oliver says that there wasn't enough for both and that
the other student is worth more to the world than he is,"
answered Susan. "Then, of course, when he got so poor that he
had to pawn his clothes or starve, he wrote father an almost
condescending letter and said that as much as he hated business,
he supposed he'd have to come back and go to work. 'Only,' he
added, 'for God's sake, don't make it tobacco!' Wasn't that
dreadful?"

"It was extremely impertinent," replied Miss Priscilla sternly,
"and to Cyrus of all persons! I am surprised that he allowed him
to come into the house."

"Oh, father doesn't take any of his talk seriously. He calls it
'starvation foolishness,' and says that Oliver will get over it
as soon as he has a nice little bank account. Perhaps he will -
he is only twenty-two, you know - but just now his head is full
of all kinds of new ideas he picked up somewhere abroad. He's as
clever as he can be, there's no doubt of that, and he'd be really
good-looking, too, if he didn't have the crooked nose of the
Treadwells. Virginia has seen him only once in the street, but
she's more than half in love with him already."

"Do come, Susan!" remonstrated Virginia, blushing as red as the
rose in her hair. "It's past six o'clock and the General will
have gone if we don't hurry." And turning away from the porch,
she ran between the flowering syringa bushes down the path to the gate.

Having lost his bit of cake, the bird began to pipe shrilly,
while Miss Priscilla drew a straight wicker chair (she never
used rockers) beside the cage, and, stretching out her feet in
their large cloth shoes with elastic sides, counted the stitches
in an afghan she was knitting in narrow blue and orange strips.
In front of her, the street trailed between cool, dim houses which
were filled with quiet, and from the hall at her back there came
a whispering sound as the breeze moved like a ghostly footstep
through an alcove window. With that strange power of reflecting the variable moods of humanity which one sometimes finds in inanimate objects, the face of the old house had borrowed from the face of its mistress the look of cheerful fortitude with which h
er generation had survived the agony of defeat and the humiliation of reconstruction. After nineteen years, the Academy

still bore the scars of war on its battered front. Once it had
watched the spectre of famine stalk over the grass-grown pavement,
and had heard the rattle of musketry and the roar of cannon borne on
the southern breeze that now wafted the sounds of the saw and the
hammer from an adjacent street. Once it had seen the flight of
refugees, the overflow of the wounded from hospitals and churches,
the panic of liberated slaves, the steady conquering march of the
army of invasion. And though it would never have occurred
to Miss Priscilla that either she or her house had borne
any relation to history (which she regarded strictly as a
branch of study and visualized as a list of dates or
as a king wearing his crown), she had, in fact, played
a modest yet effective part in the rapidly changing
civilization of her age. But events were powerless
against the genial heroism in which she was armoured, and it
was characteristic of her, as well as of her race, that, while
she sat now in the midst of encircling battlefields, with her
eyes on the walk over which she had seen the blood of the
wounded drip when they were lifted into her door, she
should be brooding not over the tremendous tragedies
through which she had passed, but over the lesson in
physical geography she must teach in the morning. Her lips
moved gently, and a listener, had there been one, might have
heard her murmur: "The four great alluvial plains of
Asia - those of China and of the Amoo Daria in temperate
regions; of the Euphrates and Tigris in the warm temperate;
of the Indus and Ganges under the Tropic - with the Nile
valley in Africa, were the theatres of the most ancient
civilizations known to history or tradition - "

As she ended, a sigh escaped her, for the instruction of
the young was for her a matter not of choice, but of necessity.
With the majority of maiden ladies left destitute in Dinwiddie
after the war, she had turned naturally to teaching as the only
nice and respectable occupation which required neither preparation
of mind nor considerable outlay of money. The fact that she was
the single surviving child of a gallant Confederate general, who,
having distinguished himself and his descendants, fell at last in
the Battle of Gettysburg, was sufficient recommendation of her
abilities in the eyes of her fellow citizens. Had she chosen to
paint portraits or to write poems, they would have rallied quite
as loyally to her support. Few, indeed, were the girls born in
Dinwiddie since the war who had not learned reading, penmanship
("up to the right, down to the left, my dear"), geography, history,
arithmetic, deportment, and the fine arts, in the Academy for
Young Ladies. The brilliant military record of the General still
shed a legendary lustre upon the school, and it was earnestly
believed that no girl, after leaving there with a diploma for
good conduct, could possibly go wrong or become eccentric in her
later years. To be sure, she might remain a trifle weak in her
spelling (Miss Priscilla having, as she confessed, a poor head
for that branch of study) but, after all, as the rector had once
remarked, good spelling was by no means a necessary
accomplishment for a lady; and, for the rest, it was certain
that the moral education of a pupil of the Academy would be firmly
rooted in such fundamental verities as the superiority of man
and the aristocratic supremacy of the Episcopal Church.
From charming Sally Goode,

now married to Tom Peachey, known familiarly as "honest Tom,"
the editor of the Dinwiddie Bee, to lovely Virginia Pendleton,
the mark of Miss Priscilla was ineffaceably impressed upon the
daughters of the leading families.

Remembering this now, as she was disposed to do whenever she
was knitting without company, Miss Priscilla dropped her long
wooden needles in her lap, and leaning forward in her chair,
gazed out upon the town with an expression of child-like
confidence, of touching innocence. This innocence, which
belonged to the very essence of her soul had survived both the
fugitive joys and the brutal disillusionments of life.
Experience could not shatter it, for it was the
product of a courage that feared nothing except
opinions. Just as the town had battled for a
principle without understanding it, so she was
capable of dying for an idea, but not of conceiving
one. She had suffered everything from the war
except the necessity of thinking independently
about it, and, though in later years memory had
become so sacred to her that she rarely indulged in
it, she still clung passionately to the habits of her
ancestors under the impression that she was
clinging to their ideals. Little things filled her
days - the trivial details of the classroom and of the
market, the small domestic disturbances of her
neighbours, the moral or mental delinquencies of
her two coloured servants - and even her religious
veneration for the Episcopal Church had crystallized
at last into a worship of customs.

To-day, at the beginning of the industrial awakening
of the South, she (who was but the embodied spirit of
her race) stood firmly rooted in all that was static,

in all that was obsolete and outgrown in the Virginia
of the eighties. Though she felt as yet merely the vague
uneasiness with which her mind recoiled from the first stirrings
of change, she was beginning dimly to realize that the car of
progress would move through the quiet streets before the decade
was over. The smoke of factories was already succeeding the
smoke of the battlefields, and out of the ashes of a
vanquished idealism the spirit of commercial materialism was
born. What was left of the old was fighting valiantly, but
hopelessly, against what had come of the new. The two forces
filled the streets of Dinwiddie. They were embodied in
classes, in individuals, in articles of faith, in ideals of
manners. The symbol of the one spirit was the memorial wreaths
on the battle-fields; of the other it was the prophetic smoke
of the factories. From where she stood in High Street,
she could see this incense to Mammon rising above
the spires of the churches, above the houses and
the hovels, above the charm and the provincialism
which made the Dinwiddie of the eighties. And this
charm, as well as this provincialism, appeared to her
to be so inalienable a part of the old order, with its
intrepid faith in itself, with its militant enthusiasm,
with its courageous battle against industrial evolution,
with its strength, its narrowness, its nobility, its
blindness, that, looking ahead, she could discern only the
arid stretch of a civilization from which the last
remnant of beauty was banished forever. Already she
felt the breaking of those bonds of sympathy which
had held the twenty-one thousand inhabitants of
Dinwiddie, as they had held the entire South, solidly knit
together in a passive yet effectual resistance to the spirit of

change. Of the world beyond the borders of Virginia,
Dinwiddians knew merely that it was either Yankee or
foreign, and therefore to be pitied or condemned according
to the Evangelical or the Calvinistic convictions of the
observer. Philosophy, they regarded with the distrust of a
people whose notable achievements have not been in the
direction of the contemplative virtues; and having lived
comfortably and created a civilization without the aid of
science, they could afford not unreasonably to despise it. It
was a quarter of a century since "The Origin of Species" had
changed the course of the world's thought, yet it had never
reached them. To be sure, there was an old gentleman in
Tabb Street whose title, "the professor," had been conferred
in public recognition of peaceful pursuits; but since he never
went to church, his learning was chiefly effective when used
to point a moral from the pulpit. There was, also, a tradition
that General Goode had been seen reading Plato before the
Battle of Seven Pines; and this picturesque incident had
contributed the distinction of the scholar to the more
effulgent glory of the soldier. But for purely abstract thought -
for the thought that did not construct an heroic attitude or a
concrete image - there was as little room in the newer industrial
system as there had been in the aristocratic society which preceded it.
The world still clung to the belief that the
business of humanity was confined to the preservation of the
institutions which existed in the present moment of history -
and Dinwiddie was only a quiet backwater into which opinions, like
fashions, were borne on the current of some tributary stream of
thought. Human nature in this

town of twenty-one thousand inhabitants differed from
human nature in London or in the Desert of Sahara mainly
in the things that it ate and the manner in which it carried its
clothes. The same passions stirred its heart, the same
instincts moved its body, the same contentment with things
as they are, and the same terror of things as they might be,
warped its mind.

The canary fluted on, and from beyond the mulberry
trees there floated the droning voice of an aged negress, in
tatters and a red bandanna turban, who persuasively
offered strawberries to the silent houses.

Then, suddenly, out of nothing, it seemed to Miss
Priscilla, a miracle occurred! The immemorial calm of High
Street was broken by the sound of rapidly moving wheels
(not the jingling rattle of market wagons nor the
comfortable roll of doctors' buggies), and a strange new
vehicle, belonging to the Dinwiddie Livery Stables, and
containing a young man with longish hair and a flowing tie,
turned the corner by Saint James' Church, and passed over
the earthen roadbed in front of the green lattice. As the
young man went by, he looked up quickly, smiled with the
engaging frankness of a genial nature, and lifting his hat with
a charming bow, revealed to Miss Priscilla's eyes the fact
that his hair was thick and dark as well as long and wavy.
While he looked at her, she noticed, also, that he had a
thin, high-coloured face, lighted by a pair of eager dark
eyes which lent a glow of impetuous energy to his features.
The Treadwell

nose, she recognized, but beneath the Treadwell nose there was a
clean-shaven, boyish mouth which belied the Treadwell nature in
every sensitive curve and outline.

"I'd have known him anywhere from Susan's description," she
thought, and added suspiciously, "I wonder why he peered so long
around that corner? It wouldn't surprise me a bit if those girls
were coming back that way."

Impelled by her mounting excitement, she leaned forward until the
ball of orange-coloured yarn rolled from her short lap and over
the polished floor of the porch. Before she could stoop
to pick it up, she was arrested by the reappearance of the two
girls at the corner beyond which Oliver had gazed so intently.
Then, as they drew nearer, she saw that Virginia's face was pink
and her eyes starry under their lowered lashes. An inward radiance
shone in the girl's look and appeared to shape her soul and body to
its secret influence. Miss Priscilla, who had known her since
the first day she came to school (with her lunch, from which she refused
to be parted, tightly tied up in red and white napkin), felt suddenly
that she was a stranger. A quality which she had never
realized her pupil possessed had risen supreme in an instant over
the familiar attributes of her character. So quickly does emotion
separate the individual from the inherent soul of the race.

Susan, who was a little in advance, came rapidly up the walk,
and the older woman greeted her with the words:

She sat down in a low chair by the teacher's side,
while Virginia went over to the cage and stood gazing
thoughtfully at the singing bird.

"Well, I don't think his nose spoils him," replied Miss Priscilla
after a minute, "but there's something foreign looking about him,
and I hope Cyrus isn't thinking seriously about putting him into the
bank."

"That was the first thing that occurred to father," answered
Susan, "but Oliver told me last night while we were unpacking
his books - he has a quantity of books and he kept them even
when he had to sell his clothes - that he didn't see to
save his life how he was going to stand it."

"Stand what?" inquired Miss Priscilla, a trifle tartly, for after
the vicissitudes of her life it was but natural that she should
hesitate to regard so stable an institution as the Dinwiddie Bank
as something to be "stood." "Why, I thought a young
man couldn't do better than get a place in the bank. Jinny's father
was telling me in the market last Saturday that he wanted his
nephew John Henry to start right in there if they could find
room for him."

"Oh, of course, it's just what John Henry would like," said
Virginia, speaking for the first time.

"Then if it's good enough for John Henry, it's good enough for
Oliver, I reckon," rejoined Miss Priscilla. "Anybody who has mixed
with beggars oughtn't to turn up his nose at a respectable bank."

"But he says it's because the bank is so respectable that he doesn't
think he could stand it," answered Susan.

Virginia, who had been looking with her rapt gaze down
the deserted street, quivered at the words as if they had
stabbed her.

"But he wants to be a writer, Susan," she protested. "A
great many very nice people are writers."

"Then why doesn't he go about it in a proper way, if he
isn't ashamed of it?" asked the teacher, and she added
reflectively after a pause, "I wish he'd write a good history
of the war - one that doesn't deal so much with the North.
I've almost had to stop teaching United States history
because there is hardly one written now that I would let
come inside my doors."

"He doesn't want to write histories," replied Susan.
"Father suggested to him at supper last night that if he
would try his hand at a history of Virginia, and be careful
not to put in anything that might offend anybody, he could
get it taught in every private school in the State. But he said
he'd be shot first."

"Perhaps he's a genius," said Virginia in a startled voice.
"Geniuses are always different from other people, aren't
they?"

"I don't know," answered Susan doubtfully. "He talks of
things I never heard of before, and he seems to think that
they are the most important things in the world."

"What things?" asked Virginia breathlessly.

"Oh, I can't tell you because they are so new, but he
seems on fire when he talks of them. He talks for hours
about art and its service to humanity and about going
down to the people and uplifting the masses."

Susan. "He quotes all the time from writers I've never heard
of, and he laughs at every book he sees in the house.
Yesterday he picked up one of Mrs. Southworth's novels
on mother's bureau and asked her how she could allow
such immoral stuff in her room. She had got it out of the
bookcase to lend to Miss Willy Whitlow, who was there
making my dress, but he scolded her so about it that at last
Miss Willy went off with Mill's 'Essay on Liberty,' and
mother burned all of Mrs. Southworth's that she had in the
house. Oliver has been so nice to mother that I believe she
would make a bonfire of her furniture if he asked her to do
it."

"Is he really trying to unsettle Miss Willy's mind?" questioned
the teacher anxiously. "How on earth could she go out sewing
by the day if she didn't have her religious convictions?"

"That's just what I asked him," returned Susan, who,
besides being dangerously clever, had a remarkably level
head to keep her balanced. "But he answered that until
people got unsettled they would never move, and when I
wanted to find out where he thought poor little Miss Willy
could possibly move to, he only got impatient and said that
I was trying to bury the principle under the facts. We very
nearly quarrelled over Miss Willy, but of course she took
the book to please Oliver and couldn't worry through a line
of it to save her soul."

"Did he say anything about his work? What he wants to
do, I mean?" asked Virginia, and her voice was so charged
with feeling that it gave an emotional quality to the question.

heart is in it, and when he isn't talking about
reaching the people, he talks about what he calls
'technique.' "

"Are you sure it isn't poetry?" inquired Miss
Priscilla, humming back like a bee to the tempting
sweets of conjecture. "I've always heard that
poetry was the ruination of Poe."

"No, it isn't poetry - not exactly at least -
it's plays," answered Susan. "He talked to me till
twelve o'clock last night while we were arranging
his books, and he told me that he meant to write
really great dramas, but that America wasn't
ready for them yet and that was why he had had
to sell his clothes. He looked positively starved,
but he say he doesn't mind starving a while if he
can only live up to his ideal."

"Well, I wonder what his ideal is?" remarked
Miss Priscilla grimly.

"It has something to do with his belief that art
can grow only out of sacrifice," said Susan. "I
never heard anybody - not even Jinny's father in
church talk so much about sacrifice."

"But the rector doesn't talk about sacrifice for
the theatre," retorted the teacher, and she added
with crushing finality, "I don't believe there is a
particle of sense in it. If he is going to write, why
on earth doesn't he sit straight down and do it?
Why, when little Miss Amanda Sheppard was left
at sixty without a roof over her head, she began
at once, without saying a word to anybody, to
write historical novels."

"It does seem funny until you talk with him,"
admitted Susan. "But he is so much in earnest
that when you listen to him you can't help believing in

him. He is so full of convictions that he convinces
you in spite yourself."

"Convictions about what?" demanded Miss Priscilla.
"I don't see how a young man who refuses to be
confirmed can have any convictions."

"Well, he has, and he feels just as strongly
about them as we do about ours."

"But how can he possibly feel as strongly about
a wrong conviction as we do about a right one?"
insisted the older woman stubbornly, for she
realized vaguely that they were approaching
dangerous ground and set out to check their
advance in true Dinwiddie fashion, which was
strictly prohibitive.

"I like a man who has opinions of his own and
isn't ashamed to stand up for them," said Virginia
with a resolution that made her appear suddenly
taller.

"Not false opinions, Jinny!" rejoined Miss
Priscilla, and her manner carried them with a
bound back to the schoolroom, for her mental
vision saw in a flash the beribboned diploma for
good conduct which her favourite pupil had borne
away from the Academy on Commencement day
two years ago, and a shudder seized her lest she
should have left a single unprotected breach in
the girl's mind through which an unauthorized
idea might enter. Had she trusted too confidently
to the fact that Virginia's father was a clergyman,
and therefore spiritually armed for the defence
and guidance of his daughter? Virginia, in spite of
her gaiety, had been what Miss Priscilla called "a
docile pupil," meaning one who deferentially submitted
her opinions to her superiors, and to go
through life perpetually submitting her opinions was,
in the eyes of her parents and her teacher, the

divinely appointed task of woman.
Her education was founded upon the simple
theory that the less a girl knew about life, the
better prepared she would be to contend with it.
Knowledge of any sort (except the rudiments of
reading and writing, the geography of countries
she would never visit, and the dates of battles she
would never mention) was kept from her as
rigorously as if it contained the germs of a
contagious disease. And this ignorance of anything
that could possibly be useful to her was supposed
in some mysterious way to add to her value as a
woman and to make her a more desirable
companion to a man who, either by experience or
by instinct, was expected "to know his world."
Unlike Susan (who, in a community which offered
few opportunities to women outside of the nursery
or the kitchen, had been born with the inquiring
spirit and would ask questions), Virginia had until
to-day accepted with humility the doctrine that a
natural curiosity about the universe is the
beginning of infidelity. The chief object of her
upbringing, which differed in no essential
particular from that of every other well-born and
well-bred Southern woman of her day, was to
paralyze her reasoning faculties so completely
that all danger of mental "unsettling" or even
movement was eliminated from her future. To
solidify the forces of mind into the inherited
mould of fixed beliefs was, in the opinion of the
age, to achieve the definite end of all education.
When the child ceased to wonder before the veil of
appearances, the battle of orthodoxy with
speculation was over, and Miss Priscilla felt that
she could rest on her victory. With Susan she had
failed, because the daughter of Cyrus Treadwell was

one of those inexplicable variations from
ancestral stock over which the naturalists were
still waging their merry war; but Virginia, with a
line of earnest theologians and of saintly
self-effacing women at her back, offered as little
resistance as some exquisite plastic material in
the teacher's hands.

Now, as if the same lightning flash which had
illuminated the beribboned diploma in Miss
Priscilla's mind had passed to Virginia also, the
girl bit back a retort that was trembling on her
lips. "I wonder if she can be getting to know
things?" thought the older woman as she watched
her, and she added half resentfully, "I've
sometimes suspected that Gabriel Pendleton was
almost too mild and easy going for a clergyman. If
the Lord hadn't made him a saint, Heaven knows
what would have become of him!"

"Don't try to put notions into Jinny's head,
Susan," she said after a thoughtful pause. "If
Oliver were the right kind of young man, he'd
give up this nonsense and settle down to some
sober work. The first time I get a chance I'm going
to tell him so."

"I don't believe it will be any use," responded
Susan. "Father tried to reason with him last
night, and they almost quarrelled."

"Quarrelled with Cyrus!" gasped the teacher.

"At one time I thought he'd walk out of the
house and never come back," pursued Susan. "He
told father that his sordid commercialism would
end by destroying all that was charming in
Dinwiddie. Afterward he apologized for his
rudeness, but when he did so, he said, 'I meant
every word of it.' "

"The idea of his daring to talk that way when Cyrus had to
pay his fare down from New York."

"Of course father brought it on," returned Susan
judicially. "You know he doesn't like anybody to disagree
with him, and when Oliver began to argue about its being
unscrupulous to write history the way people wanted it, he
lost his temper and said some angry things about the
theatre and actors."

"I suppose a great man like your father may expect his
family to bow to his opinions," replied the teacher, for so
obscure was her mental connection between the
construction of the future and the destruction of the past,
that she could honestly admire Cyrus Treadwell for
possessing the qualities her soul abhorred. The simple awe
of financial success, which occupies in the American mind
the vacant space of the monarchical cult, had begun already
to generate the myth of greatness around Cyrus, and, like all
other myths, this owed its origin less to the wilful conspiracy
of the few than it did to the confiding superstition of the
many.

"I hope Oliver won't do anything rash," said Susan,
ignoring Miss Priscilla's tribute. "He is so impulsive and
headstrong that I don't see how he can get on with father."

At this Virginia broke her quivering silence. "Can't you
make him careful, Susan?" she asked, and without waiting
for an answer, bent over and kissed Miss Priscilla on the
cheek. "I must be going now or mother will worry," she
added before she tripped ahead of Susan down the steps
and along the palely shining path to the gate.
Rising from her chair, Miss Priscilla leaned over

the railing of the porch, and gazed wistfully after the girls'
vanishing figures.

"If there was ever a girl who looked as if she were cut
out for happiness, it is Jinny Pendleton," she said aloud
after a minute. A tear welled in her eye, and rolling over her
cheek, dropped on her bosom. From some obscure corner
of her memory, undevastated by war or by ruin, her own
youth appeared to take the place of Virginia's. She saw
herself, as she had seen the other an instant before,
standing flushed and expectant before the untrodden road
of the future. She heard again the wings of happiness
rustling unseen about her, and she felt again the great hope
which is the challenge that youth flings to destiny. Life rose
before her, not as she had found it, but as she had once
believed it to be. The days when little things had not filled
her thoughts returned in the fugitive glow of her
memory - for she, also, middle-aged,
obese, cumbered with trivial cares, had had her dream
of a love that would change and glorify the reality. The
heritage of woman was hers as well as Virginia's. And for
the first time, standing there, she grew dimly conscious of
the portion of suffering which Nature had allotted to them
both from the beginning. Was it all waiting - waiting,
as it had been while battles were fought and armies were
marching? Did the future hold this for Virginia also? Would
life yield nothing more to that radiant girl than it had yielded
to her or to the other women whom she had known?
Strange how the terrible innocence of youth had moved her
placid middle-age as if it were sadness!

CHAPTER II
HER INHERITANCE
A BLOCK away, near the head of High Street, stood the
old church of Saint James, and at its back, separated by a
white paling fence from the squat pinkish tower and the
solitary grave in the churchyard (which was that of a
Southern soldier who had fallen in the Battle of Dinwiddie),
was the oblong wooden rectory in which Gabriel
Pendleton had lived since he had exchanged his sword for
a prayer-book and his worn Confederate uniform for a
surplice. The church, which was redeemed from
architectural damnation by its sacred cruciform and its low
ivied buttresses where innumerable sparrows nested, cast
its shadow, on clear days, over the beds of bleeding hearts
and lilies-of-the-valley in the neglected garden, to the
quaint old house, with its spreading wings, its outside
chimneys, and its sloping shingled roof, from which five
dormer-windows stared in a row over the slender columns
of the porch. The garden had been planned in the days
when it was easy to put a dozen slaves to uprooting weeds
or trimming flower beds, and had passed in later years to
the breathless ministrations of negro infants, whose
experience varied from the doubtful innocence of the
crawling age to the complete sophistication of six or seven
years. Dandelion and wire-grass rioted, in spite of their
earnest efforts, over the crooked path from the porch, and periwinkle,
Page 27

once an intruder from the churchyard, spread now in
rank disorder down the terraced hillside on the left, where a
steep flight of steps fell clear to the narrow
cross street descending gradually into the crowded
quarters of the town. Directly in front of the porch on either
side of the path grew two giant paulownia trees, royal at
this season in a mantle of violet blossoms, and it was under
their arching boughs that the girls stopped when they had
entered the garden. Ever since Virginia could remember,
she had heard threats of cutting down the paulownias
because of the litter the falling petals made in the spring,
and ever since she could lisp at all she had begged her
father to spare them for the sake of the enormous roots,
into which she had loved to cuddle and hide.

"If I were ever to go away, I believe they would cut
down these trees," she said now a little wistfully, but
she was not thinking of the paulownias.

"Why should they when they give such splendid shade?
And, besides, they wouldn't do anything you didn't like for
worlds."

"Oh, of course they wouldn't, but as soon as I was out
of sight they might persuade themselves that I liked it,"
answered Virginia, with a tender laugh. Though she was
not by nature discerning, there were moments when she
surprised Susan by her penetrating insight into the
character of her parents, and this insight, which was
emotional rather than intellectual, had enabled her to
dominate them almost from infancy.

Silence fell between them, while they gazed through the
veil of twilight at the marble shaft above the grave of the
Confederate soldier. Then suddenly Susan spoke in a
constrained voice, without turning her head.

"I don't believe that. They stayed in the same
boarding-house once, and you know how Abby is about
men."

"Yes, I know, and it's just the way men are about
Abby."

"Well, Oliver isn't, I'm sure. I don't believe he's ever
given her more than a thought, and he told me last night
that he couldn't abide a bouncing woman."

"Does Abby bounce?"

"You know she does - dreadfully. But it wasn't because
of Abby that I said what I did."

Something quivered softly between them, and a petal
from the Jacqueminot rose in Virginia's hair fluttered like a
crimson moth out into the twilight. "Was it because of him,
then?" she asked in a whisper.

For a moment Susan did not answer. Her gaze was on
the flight of steps, and drawing Virginia with her, she began
to walk slowly toward the terraced side of the garden. An
old lamplighter, carrying his ladder to a lamp-post at the
corner, smiled up at them with his sunken toothless mouth
as he went by.

"Partly, darling," said Susan. "He is so - I don't know
how to make you understand - so unsettled. No, that isn't
exactly what I mean."

Her fine, serious face showed clear and pale in the
twilight. From the high forehead, under the girlish fringe of
fair hair, to the thin, firm lips, which were too

straight and colourless for beauty, it was the face of a
woman who could feel strongly, but whose affections
would never blur the definite forms or outlines of life. She
looked out upon the world with level, dispassionate eyes in
which there was none of Virginia's uncritical, emotional
softness. Temperamentally she was uncompromisingly
honest in her attitude toward the universe, which appeared
to her, not as it did to Virginia, in mere formless masses of
colour out of which people and objects emerged like
figures painted on air, but as distinct, impersonal, and final
as a geometrical problem. She was one of those women
who are called "sensible" by their acquaintances - meaning
that they are born already disciplined and confirmed in the
quieter and more orderly processes of life. Her natural
intelligence having overcome the defects of her education,
she thought not vaguely, but with clearness and precision,
and something of this clearness and precision was revealed
in her manner and in her appearance, as if she had escaped
at twenty years from the impulsive judgments and the
troublous solicitudes of youth. At forty, she would
probably begin to grow young again, and at fifty, it is not
unlikely that she would turn her back upon old age forever.
Just now she was too tremendously earnest about life,
which she treated quite in the large manner, to take a
serious interest in living.

"Promise me, Jinny, that you'll never let anybody take
my place," she said, turning when they had reached the
head of the steps.

With arms interlaced they stood gazing down
into the street, where the shadow of the old
lamplighter glided like a ghost under the row of
pale flickering lights. From a honeysuckle-trellis
on the other side of the porch, a penetrating
sweetness came in breaths, now rising, now dying
away. In Virginia's heart, Love stirred suddenly,
and blind, wingless, imprisoned, struggled for
freedom.

"It is late, I must be going," said Susan. "I wish
we lived nearer each other."

"Isn't it too dark for you to go alone? John
Henry will stop on his way from work, and he'll
take you - if you really won't stay to supper."

"No, I don't mind in the least going by myself. It
isn't night, anyway, and people are sitting out on
their porches."

A minute afterwards they parted, Susan going
swiftly down High Street, while Virginia went
back along the path to the porch, and passing
under the paulownias, stopped beside the
honeysuckle-trellis, which extended to the ruined
kitchen garden at the rear of the house. Once
vegetables were grown here, but except for a
square bed of mint which spread hardily beneath
the back windows of the dining-room, the place
was left now a prey to such barbarian invaders as
burdock and moth mullein. On the brow of the hill,
where the garden ended, there was a gnarled and
twisted ailanthus tree, and from its roots the
ground fell sharply to a distant view of rear
enclosures and grim smoking factories. Some
clothes fluttered on a line that stretched from a
bough of the tree, and turning away as if they
offended her, Virginia closed her eyes and

breathed in the sweetness of the honeysuckle,
which mingled deliciously with the strange new
sense of approaching happiness in her heart. The
awakening of her imagination - an event more
tumultuous in its effects than the mere awakening
of emotion - had changed not only her inner life,
but the ordinary details of the world in which she
lived. Because a young man, who differed in no
appreciable manner from dozens of other young
men, had gazed into her eyes for an instant, the
whole universe was altered. What had been until
to-day a vague, wind-driven longing for happiness,
the reaching out of the dream toward the reality,
had assumed suddenly a fixed and definite
purpose. Her bright girlish visions had wrapped
themselves in a garment of flesh. A miracle more
wonderful than any she had read of had occurred
in the streets of Dinwiddie - in the very spot
where she had walked, with blind eyes and deaf
ears, every day since she could remember. Her
soul blossomed in the twilight, as a flower
blossoms, and shed its virginal sweetness. For the
first time in her twenty years she felt that an
unexplored region of happiness surrounded her.
Life appeared so beautiful that she wanted to
grasp and hold each fugitive sensation before it
escaped her. "This is different from anything I've
ever known. I never imagined it would be like
this," she thought, and the next minute: "I wonder
why no one has ever told me that it would
happen? I wonder if it has ever really happened
before, just like this, since the world began? Of all
the ways I've dreamed of his coming, I never
thought of this way - no, not for an instant. That I
should see him first in the street like any
stranger - that he

should be Susan's cousin - that we should not have spoken
a word before I knew it was he!" Everything about him, his
smile, his clothes, the way he held his head and brushed
his hair straight back from his forehead, his manner of
reclining with a slight slouch on the seat of the cart, the
picturesque blue dotted tie he wore, his hands, his way of
bowing, the red-brown of his face, and above all the eager,
impetuous look in his dark eyes - these things possessed a
glowing quality of interest which irradiated a delicious
excitement over the bare round of living. It was enough
merely to be alive and conscious that some day -
to-morrow, next week, or the next hour, perhaps, she might
meet again the look that had caused this mixture of
ecstasy and terror in her heart. The knowledge that he was
in the same town with her, watching the same lights,
thinking the same thoughts, breathing the same fragrance
of honeysuckle - this knowledge was a fact of such
tremendous importance that it dwarfed to insignificance all
the proud historic past of Dinwiddie. Her imagination,
seizing upon this bit of actuality, spun around it the
iridescent gossamer web of her fancy. She felt that it was
sufficient happiness just to stand motionless for hours and
let this thought take possession of her. Nothing else
mattered as long as this one thing was blissfully true.

Lights came out softly like stars in the houses beyond
the church-tower, and in the parlour of the rectory a lamp
flared up and then burned dimly under a red shade.
Looking through the low window, she could see the prim
set of mahogany and horsehair furniture, with its deep,
heavily carved sofa midway of the opposite wall and the
twelve chairs which custom demanded

For a moment her gaze rested on the claw-footed
mahogany table, bearing a family Bible and a photograph
album bound in morocco; on the engraving of the "Burial of
Latane" between the long windows at the back of the room;
on the cloudy, gilt-framed mirror above the mantel, with
the two standing candelabra reflected in its surface - and
all these familiar objects appeared to her as vividly as if she
had not lived with them from her infancy. A new light had
fallen over them, and it seemed to her that this light
released an inner meaning, a hidden soul, even in the claw-footed
table and the threadbare Axminster carpet. Then the
door into the hall opened and her mother entered, wearing
the patched black silk dress which she had bought before
the war and had turned and darned ever since with
untiring fingers. Shrinking back into the dusk, Virginia
watched the thin, slightly stooping figure as it stood
arrested there in the subdued glow of the lamplight. She
saw the pale oval face, so transparent that it was like the
face of a ghost, the fine brown hair parted smoothly under
the small net cap, the soft faded eyes in their hollowed and
faintly bluish sockets, and the sweet, patient lips, with
their expression of anxious sympathy, as of one who had
lived not in her own joys and sorrows, but in those of
others. Vaguely, the girl realized that her mother had had
what is called "a hard life," but this knowledge brought no
tremor of apprehension for herself, no shadow of disbelief in
her own unquestionable right to happiness. A glorious
certainty possessed her that her own life would be different
from anything that had ever been in the past.

The front door opened and shut; there was a step on the
soft grass under the honeysuckle-trellis, and her father
came towards her, with his long black coat flapping about
him. He always wore clothes several sizes too large for him
under the impression that it was a point of economy and
that they would last longer if there was no "strain" put
upon them. He was a small, wiry man, with an amazing
amount of strength for his build, and a keen, humorous
face, ornamented by a pointed chin beard which he called
his "goatee." His eyes were light grey with a twinkle which
rarely left them except at the altar, and the skin of his
cheeks had never lost the drawn and parchment-like look
acquired during the last years of the war. One of the many
martial Christians of the Confederacy, he had laid aside his
surplice at the first call for troops to defend the borders, and
had resumed it immediately after the surrender at
Appomattox. It was still an open question in Dinwiddie
whether Gabriel Pendleton, who was admitted to have been
born a saint, had achieved greater distinction as a fighter or
a clergyman; though he himself had accepted the opposite
vocations with equal humility. Only in the dead of
sweltering summer nights did he sometimes arouse his wife
with a groan and the halting words, "Lucy, I can't sleep for
thinking of those men I killed in the war." But with the
earliest breeze of dawn, his remorse usually left him, and
he would rise and go about his parochial duties with the
serene and child-like trust in Providence that had once
carried him into battle. A militant idealism had ennobled
his fighting as it now exalted his preaching. He had never
in his life seen things as they are because he had seen
them always by the white flame of

a soul on fire with righteousness. To reach his mind,
impressions of persons or objects had first to pass through
a refining atmosphere in which all baser substances were
eliminated, and no fact had ever penetrated this medium
except in the flattering disguise of a sentiment. Having
married at twenty an idealist only less ignorant of the
world than himself, he had, inspired by her example,
immediately directed his energies towards the
whitewashing of the actuality. Both cherished the naïve
conviction that to acknowledge an evil is in a manner to
countenance its existence, and both clung fervently to the
belief that a pretty sham has a more intimate relation to
morality than has an ugly truth. Yet so unconscious were
they of weaving this elaborate tissue of illusion around the
world they inhabited that they called the mental process by
which they distorted the reality, "taking a true view of
life." To "take a true view" was to believe what was
pleasant against what was painful in spite of evidence: to
grant honesty to all men (with the possible exception of the
Yankee army and a few local scalawags known as
Readjusters); to deny virtue to no woman, not even to the
New England Abolitionist; to regard the period before the
war in Virginia as attained perfection, and the present as
falling short of that perfection only inasmuch as it had
occurred since the surrender. As life in a small place,
among a simple and guileless class of gentlefolk, all
passionately cherishing the same opinions, had never
shaken these illusions, it was but natural that they should
have done their best to hand them down as sacred
heirlooms to their only child. Even Gabriel's four years of
hard fighting and scant rations were enkindled by so much
of the disinterested idealism

that had sent his State into the Confederacy, that he had
emerged from them with an impoverished body, but an
enriched spirit. Combined with his inherent inability to face
the facts of life, there was an almost superhuman capacity
for cheerful recovery from the shocks of adversity. Since he
had married by accident the one woman who was made for
him, he had managed to preserve untarnished his innocent
assumption that marriages arranged in Heaven - for the
domestic infelicities of many of his parishioners were
powerless to affect a belief that was founded upon a solitary
personal experience. Unhappy marriages, like all other
misfortunes of society, he was inclined to regard as entirely
modern and due mainly to the decay of antebellum
institutions. "I don't remember that I ever heard of a
discontented servant or an unhappy marriage in my
boyhood," he would say when he was forced against his will
to consider either of these disturbing problems. Not
progress, but a return to the "ideals of our ancestors," was
his sole hope for the future; and in Virginia's childhood she
had grown to regard this phrase as second in reverence only
to that other familiar invocation: "If it be the will of God."

As he stood now in the square of lamplight that
streamed from the drawing-room window, she looked into
his thin, humorous face, so spiritualized by poverty and
self-sacrifice that it had become merely the veil for his
soul, and the thought came to her that she had never
really seen him as he was until to-day.

"You're out late, daughter. Isn't it time for supper?"
he asked, putting his arm about her. Beneath the simple
words she felt the profound affection which he rarely
expressed, but of which she was conscious

whenever he looked at her or spoke to her. Two days ago
this affection, of which she never thought because it
belonged to her by right like the air she breathed, had been
sufficient to fill her life to overflowing; and now, in less
than a moment, the simplest accident had pushed it into
the background. In the place where it had been there was a
restless longing which seemed at one instant a part of the
universal stirring of the spring, and became the next an
importunate desire for the coming of the lover to whom she
had been taught to look as to the fulfilment of her
womanhood. At times this lover appeared to have no
connection with Oliver Treadwell; then the memory of his
eager and searching look would flush the world with a
magic enchantment. "He might pass here at any minute,"
she thought, and immediately every simple detail of her life
was illuminated as if a quivering rosy light had fallen
aslant it. His drive down High Street in the afternoon had
left a trail of glory over the earthen roadbed.

"Yes, I was just going in," she replied to the rector's
question, and added: "How sweet the honeysuckle smells! I
never knew it to be so fragrant."

"The end of the trellis needs propping up. I noticed it this
morning," he returned, keeping his arm around her as
they passed over the short grassy walk and up the steps to
the porch. Then the door of the rectory opened, and the
silhouette of Mrs. Pendleton, in her threadbare black silk
dress with her cameo-like profile softened by the dark
bands of her hair, showed motionless against the lighted
space of the hall.

"We're here, Lucy," said the rector, kissing her; and a
minute later they entered the dining-room, which was on
the right of the staircase. The old mahogany table,

scarred by a century of service, was laid with a simple
supper of bread, tea, and sliced ham on a willow dish. At
one end there was a bowl of freshly gathered strawberries,
with the dew still on them, and Mrs. Pendleton hastened to
explain that they were a present from Tom Peachey, who
had driven out into the country in order to get them. "Well,
I hope his wife has some, also," commented the rector.
"Tom's a good fellow, but he could never keep a closed fist,
there's no use denying it."

Mrs. Pendleton, who had never denied anything in her
life, except the biblical sanction for the Thirteenth
Amendment to the Constitution, shook her head gently and
began to talk in the inattentive and anxious manner she
had acquired at scantily furnished tables. Ever since the
war, with the exception of the Reconstruction period, when
she had lived practically on charity, she had managed to
exist with serenity, and numerous negro dependents, on
the rector's salary of a thousand dollars a year. Simple and
wholesome food she had supplied to her family and her
followers, and for their desserts, as she called the sweet
things of life, she had relied with touching confidence upon
her neighbours. What they would be for the day, she did
not know, but since poverty, not prosperity, breeds the
generous heart, she was perfectly assured that when Miss
Priscilla was putting up raspberries, or Mrs. Goode was
making lemon pie, she should not be forgotten. During the
terrible war years, it had become the custom of Dinwiddie
housekeepers to remember the wife of the rector who had
plucked off his surplice for the Confederacy, and among the
older generation the habit still persisted, like all other links
that bound them to a past

which they cherished the more passionately because it
guarded a defeated cause. Like the soft apologetic murmur of
Mrs. Pendleton's voice, which was meant to distract
attention rather than to impart information, this
impassioned memory of the thing that was dead sweetened
the less romantic fact of the things that were living. The
young were ignorant of it, but the old knew. Mrs.
Pendleton, who was born a great lady, remained one when
the props and the background of a great lady had crumbled
around her; and though the part she filled was a narrow
part - a mere niche in the world's history - she filled it
superbly. From the dignity of possessions she had passed to
the finer dignity of a poverty that can do without. All the
intellect in her (for she was not clever) had been
transmuted into character by this fiery passage from
romance into reality, and though life had done its worst
with her, some fine invincible blade in the depths of her
being she had never surrendered. She would have gone to the
stake for a principle as cheerfully as she had descended from
her aristocratic niche into unceasing poverty and self-denial,
but she would have gone wearing garlands on her head and
with her faint, grave smile, in which there was almost every
quality except that of humour, touching her lips. Her hands,
which were once lovely, were now knotted and worn; for she
had toiled when it was necessary, though she had toiled
always with the manner of a lady. Even to-day it was a part
of her triumph that this dignity was so vital a factor in her
life that there was none of her husband's laughter at
circumstances to lighten her burden. To her the daily
struggle of keeping an open house on starvation fare was not
a pathetic comedy, as with Gabriel, but a desperately

smiling tragedy. What to Gabriel had been merely
the discomfort of being poor when everybody you respected
was poor with you, had been to his wife the slow agony of
crucifixion. It was she, not he, who had lain awake to
wonder where to-morrow's dinner could be got without
begging; it was she, also, who had feared to doze at dawn
lest she should oversleep herself and not be downstairs in
time to scrub the floors and the furniture before the
neighbours were stirring. Uncle Isam, whose knees were
crippled with rheumatism, and Docia, who had a "stitch" in
her side whenever she stooped, were the only servants that
remained with her, and the nursing of these was usually
added to the pitiless drudgery of her winter. But the bitter
edge to all her suffering was the feeling which her husband
spoke of in the pulpit as "false pride" - the feeling she
prayed over fervently yet without avail in church every
Sunday - and this was the ignoble terror of being seen on
her knees in her old black calico dress before she had gone
upstairs again, washed her hands with cornmeal, powdered
her face with her pink flannel starchbag, and descended in
her breakfast gown of black cashmere or lawn, with a net
scarf tied daintily around her thin throat, and a pair of
exquisitely darned lace ruffles hiding her wrists.

As she sat now, smiling and calm, at the head of her
table, there was no hint in her face of the gnawing anxiety
behind the delicate blue-veined hollows in her forehead. "I
thought John Henry would come to supper," she observed,
while her hands worked lovingly among the old white and
gold teacups which had belonged to her mother, "so I
gathered a few flowers."

garden flowers arranged, with a generous disregard of
colour, in a cut-glass bowl, as though all blossoms were
intended by their Creator to go peaceably together. Only on
formal occasions was such a decoration used on the table of
the rectory, since the happiest adornment for a meal was
supposed to be a bountiful supply of visible viands; but the
hopelessly mended mats had pierced Mrs. Pendleton's
heart, and the cut-glass bowl, like her endless prattle, was
but a pitiful subterfuge.

"Oh, I like them!" Virginia had started to answer, when
a hearty voice called, "May I come in?" from the darkness,
and a large, carelessly dressed young man, with an
amiable and rather heavy countenance, entered the hall
and passed on into the dining-room. In reply to Mrs.
Pendleton's offer of tea, he answered that he had stopped at
the Treadwells' on his way up from work. "I could hardly
break away from Oliver," he added, "but I remembered
that I'd promised Aunt Lucy to take her down to Tin Pot
Alley after supper, so I made a bolt while he was
convincing me that it's better to be poor with an idea, as he
calls it, than rich without one." Then turning to Virginia,
he asked suddenly: "What's the matter, little cousin? Been
about too much in the sun?"

"Oh, it's only the rose in my hair," responded Virginia,
and she felt that there was a fierce joy in blushing like this
even while she told herself that she would give everything
she possessed if she could only stop it.

"If you aren't well, you'd better not go with us, Jinny,"
said Mrs. Pendleton. "It was so sweet of John Henry to
remember that I'd promised to take Aunt Ailsey some of
the bitters we used to make before

the war." Everything was "so sweet" to her, the
weather, her husband's sermons, the little trays that came
continually from her neighbours, and she lived in a
perpetual state of thankfulness for favours so insignificant
that a less impressionable soul would have accepted them
as undeserving of more than the barest acknowledgment.

"I am perfectly well," insisted Virginia, a little angry
with John Henry because he had been the first to notice
her blushes.

Rising hurriedly from the table, she went to the door
and stood looking out into the spangled dusk under the
paulownias, while her mother wrapped the bottle in a piece
of white tissue paper and remarked with an animation
which served to hide her fatigue from the unobservant eyes
of her husband, that a walk would do her good on such a
"perfectly lovely night."

Gabriel, who loved her as much as a man can love a wife
who has sacrificed herself to him wisely and unwisely for
nearly thirty years, had grown so used to seeing her suffer
with a smile that he had drifted at last into the belief that
it was the only form of activity she really enjoyed. From
the day of his marriage he had never been able to deny her
anything she had set her heart upon - not even the
privilege of working herself to death for his sake when the
opportunity offered.

"Well, well, if you feel like it, of course you must go, my
dear," he replied. "I'll step over and sit a minute with Miss
Priscilla while you are away. Never could bear the house
without you, Lucy."

While this protest was still on his lips, he followed her
from the house, and turned with Virginia and John

Henry in the direction of the Young Ladies' Academy. From
the darkness beyond the iron gate there came the soothing
flow of Miss Priscilla's voice entertaining an evening caller,
and when the rector left them, as if irresistibly drawn
toward the honeyed sound of gossip, Virginia walked on in
silence between John Henry and her mother. At each corner
a flickering street lamp burned with a thin yellow flame,
and in the midst of the narrow orbit of its light several
shining moths circled swiftly like white moons revolving
about a sun. In the centre of the blocks, where the darkness
was broken only by small flower-like flakes of light that fell
in clusters through boughs of mulberry or linden trees,
there was the sound of whispering voices and of rustling
palm-leaf fans on the crowded porches behind screens of
roses or honeysuckle. Mrs. Pendleton, whose instinct
prompted her to efface herself whenever she made a third at
the meeting of maid and man (even though the man was
only her nephew John Henry), began to talk at last after
waiting modestly for her daughter to begin the conversation.
The story of Aunt Ailsey, of her great age, and her
dictatorial temper, which made living with other servants
impossible to her, started valiantly on its familiar road, and
tripped but little when the poor lady realized that neither
John Henry nor Virginia was listening. She was so used to
talking for the sake of the sound she made rather than the
impression she produced that her silvery ripple had become
almost as lacking in self-consciousness as the song of a
canary.

But Virginia, walking so quietly at her side, was
inhabiting at the moment a separate universe - a universe
smelling of honeysuckle and filled with starry pathways to
happiness. In this universe Aunt Ailsey

and her peculiarities, her mother's innocent prattle, and
the solid body of John Henry touching her arm, were all as
remote and trivial as the night moths circling around the
lamps. Looking at John Henry from under her lowered
lashes, she felt a sudden pity for him because he was so far
- so very far indeed from being the right man. She saw him
too clearly as he was - he stood before her in all the hard
brightness of the reality, and first love, like beauty,
depends less upon the truth of an outline than it does upon
the softening quality of an atmosphere. There was no
mystery for her in the simple fact of his being. There was
nothing left to discover about his great stature, his
excellent heart, and his safe, slow mind that had been
compelled to forego even the sort of education she had derived
from Miss Priscilla. She knew that he had left school at the
age of eight in order to become the support of a widowed
mother, and she was pitifully aware of the tireless efforts
he had made after reaching manhood to remedy his ignorance
of the elementary studies he had missed. Never had she heard
a complaint from him, never a regret for the sacrifice,
never so much as an idle wonder why it should have been
necessary. If the texture of his soul was not finely
wrought, the proportions of it were heroic. In him the
Pendleton idealism had left the skies and been transmuted
into the common substance of clay. He was of a practical
bent of mind and had developed a talent for his branch of
business, which, to the bitter humiliation of his mother,
was that of hardware, with a successful specialty in
bathtubs. Until to-day Virginia had always believed
that John Henry interested her, but now she wondered how
she had ever spent so many

hours listening to his talk about business. And with
the thought her whole existence appeared to her as dull and
commonplace as those hours. A single instant of experience
seemed longer to her than all the years she had lived,
and this instant had drained the colour and the sweetness
from the rest of life. The shape of her universe had trembled
suddenly and altered. Dimly she was beginning to realize
that sensation, not time, is the true measure of life.
Nothing and everything had happened to her since yesterday.

As they turned into Short Market Street, Mrs. Pendleton's
voice trailed off at last into silence, and she did
not speak again while they passed hurriedly between
the crumbling houses and the dilapidated shops which rose
darkly on either side of the narrow cinderstrewn walks.
The scent of honeysuckle did not reach here, and when
they stopped presently at the beginning of Tin Pot Alley,
there floated out to them the sharp acrid odour of huddled
negroes. In these squalid alleys, where the lamps burned
at longer distances, the more primitive forms of life
appeared to swarm like distorted images under the transparent
civilization of the town. The sound of banjo strumming
came faintly from the dimness beyond, while at their feet
the Problem of the South sprawled innocently amid tomato
cans and rotting cabbage leaves.

"Wait here just a minute and I'll run up and speak to Aunt
Ailsey," remarked Mrs. Pendleton with the dignity of a
soul that is superior to smells; and without noticing her
daughter's reproachful nod of acquiescence, she
entered the alley and disappeared through the doorway
of the nearest hovel. A minute later her serene face
looked down at them over a patchwork quilt

which hung airing at half length from the window above.
"But this is not life - it has nothing to do with life,"
thought Virginia, while the Pendleton blood in her rose in a
fierce rebellion against all that was ugly and sordid in
existence. Then her mother's tread was heard descending
the short flight of steps, and the sensation vanished as
quickly and as inexplicably as it had come.

"I tried not to keep you waiting, dear," said Mrs.
Pendleton, hastening toward them while she fanned herself
rapidly with the small black fan she carried. Her face
looked tired and worn, and before moving on, she paused a
moment and held her hand to her thin fluttering breast,
while deep bluish circles appeared to start out under the
expression of pathetic cheerfulness in her eyes. This
pathetic cheerfulness, so characteristic of the women of her
generation, was the first thing, perhaps, that a stranger
would have noticed about her face; yet it was a trait which
neither her husband nor her child had ever observed. There
was a fine moisture on her forehead, and this added so
greatly to the natural transparency of her features that,
standing there in the wan light, she might have been
mistaken for the phantom of her daughter's vivid flesh and
blood beauty. "I wonder if you would mind going on to
Bolingbroke Street, so I may speak to Belinda Treadwell a
minute?" she asked, as soon as she had recovered her
breath. "I want to find out if she has engaged Miss Willy
Whitlow for the whole week, or if there is any use my
sending a message to her over in Botetourt. If she doesn't
begin at once, Jinny, you won't have a dress to wear to
Abby Goode's party."

quiet. Not for worlds would she have asked to go to the
Treadwells', yet ever since they had started, she had longed
unceasingly to have her mother suggest it. The very stars,
she felt, had worked together to bring about her desire.

"But aren't you tired, mother? It really doesn't matter
about my dress," she murmured, for it was not in vain
that she had wrested a diploma for deportment from Miss
Priscilla.

"Why can't I take the message for you, Aunt Lucy? You
look tired to death," urged John Henry.

"Oh, I shan't mind the walk as soon as we get out into
the breeze," replied Mrs. Pendleton. "It's a lovely night,
only a little close in this alley." And as she spoke she
looked gently down on the Problem of the South as the
Southern woman had looked down on it for generations and
would continue to look down on it for generations still to
come - without seeing that it was a problem.

"Well, it's good to get a breath of air, anyway!"
exclaimed John Henry with fervour, when they had passed
out of the alley into the lighted street. Around them the
town seemed to beat with a single heart, as if it waited,
like Virginia, in breathless suspense for some secret that
must come out of the darkness. Sometimes the sidewalks
over which they passed were of flagstones, sometimes they
were of gravel or of strewn cinders. Now and then an old
stone house, which had once sheltered crinoline and lace
ruffles, or had served as a trading station with the Indians
before Dinwiddie had become a city, would loom between
two small shops where the owners, coatless and covered
with sweat, were selling flat beer to jaded and miserable
customers. Up

Bolingbroke Street a faint breeze blew, lifting the moist
satin-like hair on Mrs. Pendleton's forehead. Already its
ancient dignity had deserted the quarter in which the
Treadwells lived, and it had begun to wear a forsaken and
injured look, as though it resented the degradation of
commerce into which it had descended.

"I can't understand why Cyrus Treadwell doesn't move
over to Sycamore Street," remarked John Henry after a
moment of reflection in which he had appeared to weigh
this simple sentence with scrupulous exactness. "He's rich
enough, I suppose, to buy anything he wants."

"I've heard Susan say that it was her mother's old home
and she didn't care to leave it," said Mrs. Pendleton.

"I don't believe it's that a bit," broke in Virginia with
characteristic impulsiveness. "The only reason is that Mr.
Treadwell is stingy. With all his money, I know Mrs.
Treadwell and Susan hardly ever have a dollar they can
spend on themselves."

Though she spoke with her accustomed energy, she was
conscious all the time that the words she uttered were not
the ones in her thoughts. What did Cyrus Treadwell's
stinginess matter when his only relation to life consisted in
his being the uncle of Oliver? It was as if a single shape
moved alive through a universe peopled with shadows.
Only a borrowed radiance attached itself now to the
persons and objects that had illumined the world for her
yesterday. Yet she approached the crisis of her life so
silently that those around her did not recognize it beneath
the cover of ordinary circumstances. Like most great
moments it had come unheralded; and though the rustling of its

wings filled her soul, neither her mother nor John Henry
heard a stir in the quiet air that surrounded them. Walking
between the two who loved her, she felt that she was
separated from them both by an eternity of experience.

There were several blocks of Bolingbroke Street to walk
before the Treadwells' house was reached, and as they
sauntered slowly past decayed dwellings, Virginia's
imagination ran joyously ahead of her to the meeting. Would
it happen this time as it had happened before when he looked
at her that something would pass between them which would
make her feel that she belonged to him? So little resistance
did she offer to the purpose of Life that she seemed to have
existed from the beginning merely as an exquisite medium for
a single emotion. It was as if the dreams of all the dead
women of her race, who had lived only in loving, were
concentrated into a single shining centre of bliss - for the
accumulated vibrations of centuries were in her soul when she
trembled for the first time beneath the eyes of a lover. And
yet all this blissful violence was powerless to change the most
insignificant external fact in the universe. Though it was the
greatest thing that could ever happen to her, it was nothing to
the other twenty-one thousand human beings among whom
she lived; it left no mark upon that procession of unimportant
details which they called life.

They were in sight of the small old-fashioned brick house
of the Treadwells, with its narrow windows set discreetly
between outside shutters, and she saw that the little marble
porch was deserted except for the two pink oleander
trees, which stood in green tubs on either side of the
curved iron railings. A minute later John

Henry's imperative ring brought a young coloured maid
to the door, and Virginia, who had lingered on the
pavement, heard almost immediately an effusive duet from
her mother and Mrs. Treadwell.

"Oh, do come in, Lucy, just for a minute!"

"I can't possibly, my dear; I only wanted to ask you if
you have engaged Miss Willy Whitlow for the entire week
or if you could let me have her for Friday and Saturday?
Jinny hasn't a rag to wear to Abby Goode's lawn party and
I don't know anybody who does quite so well for her as poor
Miss Willy. Oh, that's so sweet of you! I can't thank you
enough! And you'll tell her without my sending all the way
over to Botetourt!"

By this time Susan had joined Virginia on the sidewalk,
and the liquid honey of Mrs. Pendleton's voice dropped
softly into indistinctness.

"Oh, Jinny, if I'd only known you were coming!" said
Susan. "Oliver wanted me to take him to see you, and
when I couldn't, he went over to call on Abby."

So this was the end of her walk winged with expectancy!
A disappointment as sharp as her joy had been pierced her
through as she stood there smiling into Susan's discomfited
face. With the tragic power of youth to create its own
torment, she told herself that life could never be the
same after this first taste of its bitterness.

CHAPTER III
FIRST LOVE
THE next morning, so indestructible is the happiness of
youth, she awoke with her hope as fresh as if it had not
been blighted the evening before. As she lay in bed, with
her loosened hair making a cloud over the pillows, and her
eyes shining like blue flowers in the band of sunlight that
fell through the dormer-window, she quivered to the early
sweetness of honeysuckle as though it were the charmed
sweetness of love of which she had dreamed in the night.
She was only one of the many millions of women who were
awaking at the same hour to the same miracle of Nature,
yet she might have been the first woman seeking the first
man through the vastness and the mystery of an
uninhabited earth. Impossible to believe that an experience
so wonderful was as common as the bursting of the spring
buds or the humming of the thirsty bees around the
honeysuckle arbour!

Slipping out of bed, she threw her dressing-gown over
her shoulders, and kneeling beside the window, drank in
the flower-scented air of the May morning. During the
night, the paulownia trees had shed a rain of violet
blossoms over the wet grass, where little wings of
sunshine, like golden moths, hovered above them. Beyond
the border of lilies-of-the-valley she saw the squat pinkish
tower of the church, and beneath it, in

the narrow churchyard, rose the gleaming shaft above the
grave of the Confederate soldier. On her right, in the centre
of the crooked path, three negro infants were prodding
earnestly at roots of wire-grass and dandelion; and brushing
carelessly their huddled figures, her gaze descended the
twelve steps of the almost obliterated terrace, and followed
the steep street down which a mulatto vegetable vendor was
urging his slow-footed mule.

A wave of joy rose in her breast, and she felt
that her heart melted in gratitude for the divine
beauty of life. The world showed to her as a place
filled with shining vistas of happiness, and at the
end of each of these vistas there awaited the
unknown enchanting thing which she called in
her thoughts "the future." The fact that it was the
same world in which Miss Priscilla and her
mother lived their narrow and prosaic lives did
not alter by a breath her unshakable conviction
that she herself was predestined for something
more wonderful than they had ever dreamed of.
"He may come this evening!" she thought, and
immediately the light of magic suffused the room,
the street outside, and every scarred roof in
Dinwiddie.

At the head of her bed, wedged in between the
candle stand and the window, there was a cheap
little bookcase of walnut which contained the
only volumes she had ever been permitted to
own - the poems of Mrs. Hemans and of Adelaide
Anne Procter, a carefully expurgated edition of
Shakespeare, with an inscription in the rector's
handwriting on the flyleaf; Miss Strickland's
"Lives of the Queens of England"; and several
works of fiction belonging to the class which Mrs.
Pendleton vaguely characterized as "sweet stories."

Among the more prominent of these were
"Thaddeus of Warsaw," a complete set of Miss
Yonge's novels, with a conspicuously tear-stained
volume of "The Heir of Redclyffe," and a romance
or two by obscure but innocuous authors. That any
book which told, however mildly, the truth about
life should have entered their daughter's bedroom
would have seemed little short of profanation to
both the rector and Mrs. Pendleton. The sacred
shelves of that bookcase (which had been
ceremoniously presented to her on her fourteenth
birthday) had never suffered the contaminating
presence of realism. The solitary purpose of art
was, in Mrs. Pendleton's eyes, to be "sweet," and
she scrupulously judged all literature by its
success or failure in this particular quality. It
seemed to her as wholesome to feed her
daughter's growing fancy on an imaginary line of
pious heroes, as it appeared to her moral to screen
her from all suspicion of the existence of
immorality. She did not honestly believe that any
living man resembled the "Heir of Redclyffe," any
more than she believed that the path of self-sacrifice
leads inevitably to happiness; but there
was no doubt in her mind that she advanced the
cause of righteousness when she taught these
sanctified fallacies to Virginia.

As she rose from her knees, Virginia glanced at
her white dress, which was too crumpled for her
to wear again before it was smoothed, and
thought regretfully of Aunt Docia's heart, which
invariably gave warning whenever there was
extra work to be done. "I shall have to wear
either my blue lawn or my green organdie this
evening," she thought. "I wish I could have the
sleeves changed. I wonder if mother could run a
tuck in them?"

It did not occur to her that she might smooth the dress
herself, because she knew that the iron would be wrested
from her by her mother's hands, which were so knotted and
worn that tears came to Virginia's eyes when she looked at
them. She let her mother slave over her because she had
been born into a world where the slaving of mothers was a
part of the natural order, and she had not as yet become
independent enough to question the morality of the
commonplace. At any minute she would gladly have
worked, too, but the phrase "spare Virginia" had been
uttered so often in her hearing that it had acquired at last
almost a religious significance. To have been forced to train
her daughter in any profitable occupation which might have
lifted her out of the class of unskilled labour in which
indigent gentlewomen by right belonged, would have been
the final dregs of humiliation in Mrs. Pendleton's cup. On
one of Aunt Docia's bad days, when Jinny had begged to
be allowed to do part of the washing, she had met an
almost passionate refusal from her mother. "It will be time
enough to spoil your hands after you are married, darling!"
And again, "Don't do that rough sewing, Jinny. Give it to
me." From the cradle she had borne her part in this racial
custom of the sacrifice of generation to generation - of the
perpetual immolation of age on the flowery altars of youth.
Like most customs in which we are nurtured, it had seemed
natural and pleasant enough until she had watched the
hollows deepen in her mother's temples and the tireless
knotted hands stumble at their work. Then a pang had
seized her and she had pleaded earnestly to be permitted to help.

"If you only knew how unhappy it makes me to see
you ruining your pretty fingers, Jinny. My child, the one
comfort I have is the thought that I am sparing you."

Sparing her! Always that from the first! Even Gabriel
chimed in when it became a matter of Jinny. "Let me wash
the dishes, Lucy," he would implore. "What? Will you trust
me with other people's souls, but not with your china?"

"It's not a man's work, Mr. Pendleton. What would the
neighbours think?"

"They would think, I hope, my dear, that I was doing
my duty."

"But it would not be dignified for a clergyman. No, I
cannot bear the sight of you with a dishcloth."

In the end she invariably had her way with them, for she
was the strongest. Jinny must be spared, and Gabriel must
do nothing undignified. About herself it made no difference
unless the neighbours were looking; she had not thought of
herself, except in the indomitable failing of her "false
pride," since her marriage, which had taken place in her
twentieth year. A clergyman's wife might do menial tasks
in secret, and nobody minded, but they were not for a
clergyman.

For a minute, while she was dressing, Virginia thought of
these things - of how hard life had been to her mother, of
how pretty she must have been in her youth. What she did
not think of was that her mother, like herself, was but one
of the endless procession of women who pass perpetually
from the sphere of pleasure into the sphere of service. It
was as impossible for her to picture her mother as a girl of
twenty as it was for her to imagine herself ever becoming
a woman of fifty.

When she had finished dressing she closed the door
softly after her as if she were afraid of disturbing the
silence, and ran downstairs to the dining-room, where the
rector and Mrs. Pendleton greeted her with subdued
murmurs of joy.

"I was afraid I'd miss you, daughter," from the rector,
as he drew her chair nearer.

"I was just going to carry up your tray, Jinny," from
her mother. "I kept a nice breast of chicken for you which
one of the neighbours sent me."

"I'd so much rather you'd eat it, mother," protested
Jinny, on the point of tears.

"But I couldn't, darling, I really couldn't manage it. A
cup of coffee and a bit of toast is all I can possibly stand in
the morning. I was up early, for Docia was threatened
with one of her heart attacks, and it always gives me a
little headache to miss my morning nap."

"Then you can't go to market, Lucy; it is out of the
question," insisted the rector. "After thirty years you
might as well make up your mind to trust me, my dear."

"But the last time you went you gave away our shoulder
of lamb to a beggar," replied his wife, and she hastened to
add tenderly, lest he should accept the remark as a
reproof, "it's sweet of you, dearest, but a little walk will be
good for my head if I am careful to keep on the shady side
of the street. I can easily find a boy to bring home the
things, and I am sure it won't hurt me a bit."

"Why can't I go, mother?" implored Virginia. "Susan
always markets for Mrs. Treadwell." And she felt that
even the task of marketing was irradiated by this inner
glow which had changed the common aspect of life.

"Oh, Jinny, you know how you hate to feel the chickens,
and one can never tell how plump they are by the
feathers."

"Well, I'll feel them, mother, if you'll let me try."

"No, darling, but you may go with me and carry my
sunshade. I'm so sorry Docia can't smooth your dress. Was
it much crumpled?"

"Oh, dreadfully! And I did so want to wear it this
evening. Do you think Aunt Docia could show me
how to iron?"

Docia, who stood like an ebony image of Bellona behind
her mistress's chair, waving a variegated tissue paper fly
screen over the coffee-urn, was heard to think aloud that
"dish yer stitch ain' helt up er blessed minute sence befo'
daylight." Not unnaturally, perhaps, since she was the
most prominent figure in her own vision of the universe,
she had come at last to regard her recurrent "stitch" as an
event of greater consequence than Virginia's appearance in
immaculate white muslin. An uncertain heart combined with
a certain temper had elevated her from a servile position
to one of absolute autocracy in the household. Everybody
feared her, so nobody had ever dared ask her to leave. As she
had rebelled long ago against the badge of a cap and an
apron, she appeared in the dining-room clad in garments of
various hues, and her dress on this particular morning was a
purple calico crowned majestically by a pink cotton turban.
There was a tradition still afloat that Docia had been an
excellent servant before the war; but this amiable superstition
had, perhaps, as much reason to support it as had Gabriel's
innocent conviction that there were no faithless husbands
when there were no divorces.

"I'm afraid Docia can't do it," sighed Mrs. Pendleton, for
her ears had caught the faint thunder of the war goddess
behind her chair, and her soul, which feared neither
armies nor adversities, trembled before her former slaves.
"But it won't take me a minute if you'll have it ready right
after dinner."

"Oh, mother, of course I couldn't let you for anything. I
only thought Aunt Docia might be able to teach me how to
iron."

At this, Docia muttered audibly that she "ain' got no
time ter be sho'in' nobody nuttin'."

"There, now, Docia, you mustn't lose your temper,"
observed Gabriel as he rose from his chair. It was at such
moments that the remembered joys of slavery left a bitter
after taste on his lips. Clearly it was impossible to turn
into the streets a servant who had once belonged to you!

When they were in the hall together, Mrs. Pendleton
whispered nervously to her husband that it must be "poor
Docia's heart that made her so disagreeable and that she
would feel better to-morrow."

"Wouldn't it be possible, my dear?" inquired the rector
in his pulpit manner, to which his wife's only answer was
a startled "Sh-sh-ush."

An hour later the door of Gabriel's study opened softly,
and Mrs. Pendleton entered with the humble and
apologetic manner in which she always intruded upon her
husband's pursuits. There was an accepted theory in the
family, shared even by Uncle Isam and Aunt Docia, that
whenever Gabriel was left alone for an instant, his
thoughts naturally deflected into spiritual paths. In the
early days of his marriage he had tried honestly to live up
to this exalted idea of his character;

then finding the effort beyond him, and being a man with
an innate detestation of hypocrisy, he had earnestly
endeavoured to disabuse his wife's imagination of the
mistaken belief in his divinity. But a notion once firmly
fixed in Mrs. Pendleton's mind might as well have been
embedded in rock. By virtue of that gentle obstinacy which
enabled her to believe in an illusion the more intensely
because it had vanished, she had triumphed not only over
circumstances, but over truth itself. By virtue of this
quality, she had created the world in which she moved and
had wrought beauty out of chaos.

"Are you busy with your sermon, dear?" she asked,
pausing in the doorway, and gazing reverently at her
husband over the small black silk bag she carried. Like the
other women of Dinwiddie who had lost relatives by the
war, she had never laid aside her mourning since the
surrender; and the frame of crepe to her face gave her the
pensive look of one who has stepped out of the pageant of
life into the sacred shadows of memory.

"No, no, Lucy, I'm ready to start out with you," replied
the rector apologetically, putting a box of fishing tackle he
had been sorting back into the drawer of his desk. He was
as fond as a child of a day's sport, and never quite so happy
as when he set out with his rod and an old tomato can
filled with worms, which he had dug out of the back
garden, in his hands; but owing to the many calls upon
him and his wife's conception of his clerical dignity, he was
seldom able to gratify his natural tastes.

"Oh, father, please hurry!" called Virginia from the
porch, and rising obediently, he followed Mrs. Pendleton

through the hall and out into the May sunshine, where
the little negroes stopped an excited chase of a black and
orange butterfly to return doggedly to their weeding.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather I'd go to market,
Lucy?"

"Quite sure, dear," replied his wife, sniffing the scent of
lilies-of-the-valley with her delicate, slightly pinched
nostrils. "I thought you were going to see Mr. Treadwell
about putting John Henry into the bank," she added. "It is
such a pity to keep the poor boy selling bathtubs. His
mother felt it so terribly."

"Ah, so I was - so I was," reflected Gabriel, who, though
both of them would have been indignant at the suggestion,
was as putty in the hands of his wife. "Well, I'll look into
the bank on Cyrus after I've paid my sick calls."

With that they parted, Gabriel going on to visit a
bedridden widow in the Old Ladies' Home, while Mrs.
Pendleton and Virginia turned down a cross street that led
toward the market. At every corner, it seemed to Virginia,
middle-aged ladies, stout or thin, wearing crepe veils and
holding small black silk bags in their hands, sprang out of
the shadows of mulberry trees, and barred their leisurely
progress. And though nothing had happened in Dinwiddie
since the war, and Mrs. Pendleton had seen many of these
ladies the day before, she stopped for a sympathetic chat
with each one of them, while Virginia, standing a little
apart, patiently prodded the cinders of the walk with the
end of her sunshade. All her life the girl had been taught
to regard time as the thing of least importance in the
universe; but occasionally, while she listened in silence to

the liquid murmur of her mother's voice, she
wondered vaguely how the day's work was ever finished
in Dinwiddie. The story of Docia's impertinence was told and
retold a dozen times before they reached the market.
"And you really mean that you can't get rid of her? Why,
my dear Lucy, I wouldn't stand it a day! Now, there was
my Mandy. Such an excellent servant until she got her
head turned - " This from Mrs. Tom Peachey, an energetic
little woman, with a rosy face and a straight gray "bang"
cut short over her eyebrows. "But, Lucy, my child, are you
doing right to submit to impertinence? In the old days, I
remember, before the war - " This from Mrs. William Goode,
who had been Sally Peterson, the beauty of Dinwiddie, and
who was still superbly handsome in a tragic fashion, with a
haunted look in her eyes and masses of snow-white hair
under her mourning bonnet. Years ago Virginia had
imagined her as dwelling perpetually with the memory of
her young husband, who had fallen in his twenty-fifth year
in the Battle of Cold Harbor, but she knew now that the
haunted eyes, like all things human, were under the
despotism of trifles. To the girl, who saw in this universal
acquiescence in littleness merely the pitiful surrender of
feeble souls, there was a passionate triumph in the thought
that her own dreams were larger than the actuality that
surrounded her. Youth's scorn of the narrow details of life
left no room in her mind for an understanding of the
compromise which middle-age makes with necessity. The
pathos of resignation - of that inevitable submission to the
petty powers which the years bring - was lost upon the
wistful ignorance of inexperience. While she waited
dutifully. with her absent gaze fixed

on the old mulberry trees, which whitened as the wind
blew over them and then slowly darkened again, she
wondered if servants and gossip were the only things that
Oliver had heard of in his travels? Then she remembered
that even in Dinwiddie men were less interested in such
matters than they were in the industries of peanuts and
tobacco. Was it only women, after all, who were in
subjection to particulars?

When they turned into Old Street, John Henry hailed
them from the doorway of a shop, where he stood flanked by
a row of spotless bathtubs. He wore a loose pongee coat,
which sagged at the shoulders, his straight flaxen hair had
been freshly cut, and his crimson necktie had got a stain on
it at breakfast; but to Virginia's astonishment, he appeared
sublimely unconscious both of his bathtubs and his
appearance. He was doubtless under the delusion that a
pongee coat, being worn for comfort, was entirely successful
when it achieved that end; and as for his business, it was
beyond his comprehension that a Pendleton could have
reason to blush for a bathtub or for any other object that
afforded him an honest livelihood.

He called to them at sight, and Mrs. Pendleton,
following her instinct of fitness, left the conversation to
youth.

"John Henry, father is going to see Mr. Treadwell about
the place in the bank. Won't it be lovely if he gives it to
you!"

"He won't," replied John Henry. "I'll bet you anything
he's keeping it for his nephew."

Virginia's blush came quickly, and turning her head
away, she gazed earnestly down the street to the

octagonal market, which stood on the spot where slaves were
offered for sale when she was born.

"Mr. Treadwell is crossing the street now," she said after
a minute. "I wonder why he keeps his mouth shut so tight
when he is alone?"

A covered cart, which had been passing slowly, moved up
the hill, and from beyond it there appeared the tall spare
figure of a man with iron-gray hair, curling a little on the
temples, a sallow skin, splotched with red over the nose,
and narrow colourless lips that looked as if they were cut
out of steel. As he walked quickly up the street, every
person whom he passed turned to glance after him.

"I wonder if it is true that he hasn't made his money
honestly?" asked Virginia.

"Oh, I hope not!" exclaimed Mrs. Pendleton, who in her
natural desire to believe only good about people was
occasionally led into believing the truth.

"Well, I don't care," retorted Virginia, "he's mean. I
know just by the way his wife dresses."

"Oh, Jinny!" gasped Mrs. Pendleton, and glanced in
embarrassment at her nephew, whose face, to her surprise,
was beaming with enjoyment. The truth was that John
Henry, who would have condemned so unreasonable an
accusation had it been uttered by a full-grown male, was
enraptured by the piquancy of hearing it on the lovely lips
of his cousin. To demand that a pretty woman should
possess the mental responsibility of a human being would
have seemed an affront to his inherited ideas of gallantry.
His slow wit was enslaved by Jinny's audacity as
completely as his kind ox-like eyes were enthralled by the
young red and white of her beauty.

"But he's a great man. You can't deny that," he said with
the playful manner in which he might have, prodded a kitten
in order to make it claw.

"A great man! Just because he has made money!"

"Well, he couldn't have got rich, you know, if he hadn't
had the sense to see how to do it," replied the young man
with enthusiasm. Like most Southerners who had been
forced without preparation into the hard school of industry,
he had found that his standards followed inevitably the
changing measure of his circumstances. From his altered
point of view, the part of owing property appeared so easy,
and the part of winning it so difficult, that his respect for
culture had yielded almost unconsciously to his admiration
for commerce. When the South came again to the front, he
felt instinctively that it would come, shorn of its traditional
plumage, a victor from the hard-fought industrial
battlefields of the century; and because Cyrus Treadwell
led the way toward this triumph, he was ready to follow
him. Of the whole town, this grim, half legendary figure
(passionately revered and as passionately hated) appeared
to him to stand alone not for the decaying past, but for the
growing future. The stories of the too rapid development
of the Treadwell fortune he cast scornfully aside as the
malicious slanders of failure. What did all this tittle-tattle
about a great man prove anyhow except his greatness?
Suppose he had used his railroad to make a
Fortune - well, but for him where would the Dinwiddie and
Central be to-day if not in the junk shop? Where would the
lumber market be? the cotton market? the tobacco market?
For around Cyrus, standing alone and solitary on his height,
there had gathered the great illusion that makes

theft honest and falsehood truth - the illusion of Success;
and simple John Henry Pendleton, who, after nineteen
years of poverty and memory, was bereft alike of classical
pedantry and of physical comforts, had grown a little
weary of the endless lip-worship of a single moment in
history. Granted even that it was the greatest moment the
world had seen, still why couldn't one be satisfied to have it
take its place beside the wars of the Spartans and of the
ancient Britons? Perpetual mourning was well enough for
ladies in crepe veils and heroic gentlemen on crutches; but
when your bread and meat depended not upon the graves
you had decorated, but upon the bathtubs you had sold,
surely something could be said for the Treadwell point of
view.

As Virginia could find no answer to this remark, the
three stood in silence, gazing dreamily, with three pairs of
Pendleton eyes, down toward the site of the old slave
market. Directly in their line of vision, an overladen mule
with a sore shoulder was straining painfully under the lash,
but none of them saw it, because each of them was
morally incapable of looking an unpleasant fact in the face if
there was any honourable manner of avoiding it. What they
beheld, indeed, was the most interesting street in the world,
filled with the most interesting people, who drove happy
animals that enjoyed their servitude and needed the sound
of the lash to add cheer and liveliness to their labours.
Never had the Pendleton idealism achieved a more
absolute triumph over the actuality.

"Well, we must go on," murmured Mrs. Pendleton
withdrawing her visionary gaze from the hot street littered
with fruit rinds and blood-stained papers from

a neighbouring butcher shop. "It was lovely to have this
glimpse of you, John Henry. What nice bathtubs you have!"
Smiling her still lovely smile into the young man's eyes,
she proceeded on her leisurely way, while Virginia raised
the black silk sunshade over her head. In front of them
they could see long rows of fishcarts and vegetable stalls
around which hovered an army of eager housekeepers. The
social hours in Dinwiddie at that period were the early
morning ones in the old market, and Virginia knew that
she should hear Docia's story repeated again for the benefit
of the curious or sympathetic listeners that would soon
gather about her mother. Mrs. Pendleton's marketing,
unlike the hurried and irresponsible sort of to-day, was an
affair of time and ceremony. Among the greetings and the
condolences from other marketers there would ensue
lengthy conversations with the vendors of poultry, of fish,
or of vegetables. Every vegetable must be carefully selected
by her own hands and laid aside into her special basket,
which was in the anxious charge of a small coloured
urchin. While she felt the plump breasts of Mr. Dewlap's
chickens, she would inquire with flattering condescension
after the members of Mr. Dewlap's family. Not only did
she remember each one of them by name, but she never
forgot either the dates of their birthdays or the number of
turkeys Mrs. Dewlap had raised in a season. If marketing
is ever to be elevated from an occupation to an art, it
will be by a return to Mrs. Pendleton's method.

"Mother, please buy some strawberries," begged
Virginia.

"Darling, you know we never buy fruit, or desserts.
Somebody will certainly send us something. I saw

"Well, put a basket with my marketing, Mr. Dewlap.
Yes, I'll take that white pullet if you're sure that she is
plumper than the red one."

She moved on a step or two, while the white pullet was
handed over by its feet to the small coloured urchin and to
destruction. If Mrs. Pendleton had ever reflected on the
tragic fate of pullets, she would probably have concluded
that it was "best" for them to be fried and eaten, or
Providence, whose merciful wisdom she never questioned,
would not have permitted it. So, in the old days, she had
known where the slave market stood, without realizing in
the least that men and women were sold there. "Poor
things, it does seem dreadful, but I suppose it is better for
them to have a change sometimes," she would doubtless
have reasoned had the horror of the custom ever occurred
to her - for her heart was so sensitive to pain that she could
exist at all only by inventing a world of exquisite fiction
around her.

"Aren't you nearly through, mother?" pleaded Virginia
at last. "The sun will be so hot going home that it will
make your head worse."

Mrs. Pendleton, who was splitting a pea-shell with her
thumb in order to ascertain the size and quality of the
peas, murmured soothingly, "Just a minute, dear"; and
the girl, finding it impossible to share her mother's
enthusiasm for slaughtered animals, fell back again into
the narrow shade of the stalls. She revolted with a feeling
of outrage against the side of life that confronted
her - against the dirty floor, strewn with

withered vegetables above which flies swarmed
incessantly, and against the pathos of the small bleeding
forms which seemed related neither to the lamb in the
fields nor to the Sunday roast on the table. That divine gift
of evasion, which enabled Mrs. Pendleton to see only the
thing she wanted to see in every occurrence, was but
partially developed as yet in Virginia; and while she stood
there in the midst of her unromantic surroundings, the girl
shuddered lest Oliver Treadwell should know that she had
ever waited, hot, perspiring, with a draggled skirt, and a
bag of tomatoes grasped in her hands, while her mother
wandered from stall to stall in a tireless search for peas a
few cents cheaper than those of Mr. Dewlap. Youth, with
its ingenuous belief that love dwells in external
circumstances, was protesting against the bland assumption
of age that love creates its own peculiar circumstances out of
itself. It was absurd, she knew, to imagine that her father's
affection for her mother would alter because she haggled
over the price of peas; yet the emotion with which she
endowed Oliver Treadwell was so delicate and elusive that
she felt that the sight of a soiled skirt and a perspiring face
would blast it forever. It appeared imperative that he
should see her in white muslin, and she resolved that if it
cost Docia her life she would have the flounces of her
dress smoothed before evening. She, who was by nature
almost morbidly sensitive to suffering, became, in the
hands of this new and implacable power, as ruthless as
Fate.

"Now I'm ready, Jinny dear. Are you tired waiting?"
asked Mrs. Pendleton, coming toward her with the
coloured urchin in her train. "Why, there's Susan
Treadwell. Have you spoken to her?"

The next instant, before the startled girl could turn, a
voice cried out triumphantly: "O Jinny!" and in front of her,
looking over Susan's shoulder, she saw the eager eyes and
the thin, high-coloured face of Oliver Treadwell. For a
moment she told herself that he had read her thoughts with
his penetrating gaze, which seemed to pierce through her; and
she blushed pink while her eyes burned under her trembling
lashes. Then the paper bag, containing the tomatoes, burst
in her hands, and its contents rolled, one by one, over the
littered floor to his feet. Both stooped at once to recover it,
and while their hands touched amid wilted cabbage leaves,
the girl felt that love had taken gilded wings and departed
forever!

"Put them in the basket, dear," Mrs. Pendleton could be
heard saying calmly in the midst of her daughter's
agony - for, having lived through the brief illumination of
romance, she had come at last into that steady glow which
encompasses the commonplace.

"This is my cousin Oliver, Virginia," remarked Susan as
casually as if the meeting of the two had not been planned
from all eternity by the beneficent Powers.

"I'm afraid I've spoiled your nice red tomatoes," said a
voice that filled Virginia's whirling mind with a kind of
ecstatic dizziness. As the owner of the voice held out his
hand, she saw that it was long and thin like the rest of him,
with blue veins crossing the back, and slender, slightly
crooked fingers that hurt hers with the strength of their
pressure. "To confess the truth," he added gaily after an
instant, "my breath was quite taken away because, somehow,
this was the last place on earth in which I expected to
find you. It's a dreadful spot - don't you think so? If
we've got to

"What an extraordinary young man!" said Mrs.
Pendleton's eyes; and Virginia found herself blushing again
because she felt that her mother had not understood him. A
delicious embarrassment - something different and more
vivid than any sensation she had ever known - held her
speechless while he looked at her. Had her life depended on
it, she could not have uttered a sentence - could hardly
even have lifted her lashes, which seemed suddenly to have
become so heavy that she felt the burden of them weighing
over her eyes. All the picturesque phrases she had planned
to speak at their first meeting had taken wings with
perfidious romance, yet she would have given her dearest
possession to have been able to say something really clever.
"He thinks me a simpleton, of course," she
thought - perfectly unconscious that Oliver was not
thinking of her wits at all, but of the wonderful rose-pink of
her flesh. At one and the same instant, she felt that this
silence was the most marvellous thing that had ever
happened to her and longed to break it with some speech so
brilliant that he would never forget it. Little thrills of joy,
like tiny flames, ran over her, and the light in her eyes
shone on him through the quivering dusk of her lashes.
Even when she looked away from him, she could still see
his expression of tender gaiety, as though he were trying in
vain to laugh himself free from an impulse that was fast
growing too strong for him. What she did not know was
that the spring was calling to him through her youth and
sex as it was calling through the scented winds and the
young buds on the trees. She was as

ignorant that she offered herself to him through her velvet
softness, through the glow in her eyes, through her
quivering lips, as the flower is that it allures the bee by its
perfume. So subtly did Life use her for its end that the
illusion of choice in first love remained unimpaired.
Though she was young desire incarnate, he saw in her only
the unique and solitary woman of his dreams.

"Do you come here every day?" he asked, and
immediately the blue sky and the octagonal market spun
round at his voice.

As nothing but commonplace words would come to her,
she was obliged at last to utter them. "Oh, no, not every
day."

"I've always had a tremendous sympathy for women
because they have to market and housekeep. I wonder if
they won't revolt some time?"

This was so heretical a point of view that she tried
earnestly to comprehend it; but all the time her heart was
busy telling her how different he was from every other
man - how much more interesting! how immeasurably
superior! Her attention, in spite of her efforts at serious
thought, would not wander from the charm of his voice,
from the peculiar whimsical trick of his smile, which lifted
his mouth at one corner and made odd little wrinkles come
and go about his eyes. His manner was full of sudden
nervous gestures which surprised and enchanted her. All
other men were not merely as clay beside him - they were
as straw! Seeing that he was waiting for a response, she
made a violent endeavour to think of one, and uttered
almost inaudibly: "But don't they like it?"

she hadn't known that her speech bordered on
imbecility. "Do they really like it? or have they
been throwing dust in our eyes through the
centuries?" And he gazed at her as eagerly as if
he were hanging upon her answer. Oh, if she
could only say something clever! If she could only
say the sort of thing that would shock Miss
Priscilla! But nothing came of her wish, and she
was reduced at last to the pathetic rejoinder, "I
don't know. I'm afraid I've never thought about it."

For a moment he stared at her as though he
were enraptured by her reply. With such eyes and
such hair, she might have been as simple as she
appeared and he would never have known it. "Of
course you haven't, or you wouldn't be you!" he
responded; and by the time she came to her
senses, she was following her mother and the
negro urchin out of the market. Though she was in
reality walking over cinders, she felt that her feet
were treading on golden air.

CHAPTER IV
THE TREADWELLS
ABOVE the Dinwiddie of Virginia's girlhood,
rising sharply out of the smoothly blended level of
personalities, there towered, as far back as she
could remember, the grim and yet strangely living
figure of Cyrus Treadwell. From the intimate
social life of the town he had remained immovably
detached; but from the beginning it had been
impossible for that life to ignore him. Among a
people knit by a common pulse, yet separated by a
multitude of individual differences, he stood aloof
and indispensable, like one of the gaunt iron
bridges of his great railroad. He was at once the
destroyer and the builder - the inexorable foe of
the old feudal order and the beneficent source of
the new industrialism. Though half of Dinwiddie
hated him, the other half (hating him, perhaps
none the less) ate its bread from his hands. The
town, which had lived, fought, lost, and suffered
not as a group of individuals, but as a
psychological unit, had surrendered at last, less to
the idea of readjustment than to the indomitable
purpose of a single mind.

And yet nobody in Dinwiddie, not even Miss
Willy Whitlow, who sewed out by the day, and
knew the intimate structure of every skeleton in
every closet of the town - nobody could tell the
precise instant at which Cyrus had ceased to be
an ordinary man and

become a great one. A phrase, which had started as usual,
"The Mr. Treadwell, you know, who married poor Belinda
Bolingbroke - " swerved suddenly to "Cyrus Treadwell
told me that, and you must admit that he knows what he is
talking about" - and a reputation was made! His marriage
to "poor Belinda," which had at first appeared to be the
most conspicuous fact in his career, dwindled to
insignificance beside the rebuilding of the tobacco industry
and his immediate elevation to the vacant presidency of
one of the Machlin railroads.

It was true that in the meantime he had fought
irreproachably, but without renown, through a number of
battles; and returning to a vanquished and ruined city, had
found himself still young enough to go to school again in
matters of finance. Whether he had learned from Antrum,
the despised carpet-bagger for Machlin& Company, or
had taken his instruction at first hand from the great
Machlin himself, was in the eighties an open question in
Dinwiddie. The choice was probably given him to learn or
starve; and aided by the keen understanding and the acute
sense of property he had inherited from his Scotch-Irish
parentage, he had doubtless decided that to learn was,
after all, the easier way. Saving he had always been, and
yet with such strange and sudden starts of generosity that
he had been known to seek out distant obscure maiden
relatives and redeem the mortgaged roof over their heads.
His strongest instinct, which was merely an attenuated
shoot from his supreme feeling for possessions, was that of
race, though he had estranged both his son and his
daughter by his stubborn conviction that he was not doing

his duty by them except when he was making their lives a
burden. For, as with most men who have suffered in their
youth under oppression, his ambition was not so much to
relieve the oppressed as to become in his turn the
oppressor. Owing, perhaps, to his fine Scotch-Irish blood,
which ran a little muddy in his veins, he had never lost a
certain primitive feeling of superstition, like the decaying
root of a religious instinct; and he was as strict in his
attendance upon church as he was loose in applying the
principles of Christianity to his daily life. Sunday was
vaguely associated in his mind with such popular fetiches as
a frock coat and a roast of beef; and if the roast had been
absent from dinner, he would have felt precisely the same
indefinite disquietude that troubled him when the sermon
was left out of the service. So completely did his outward
life shape itself around the inner structure of his thought,
that, except for the two days of the week which he spent
with unfailing regularity in Wall Street, he might have been
said to live only in his office. Once when his doctor had
prescribed exercise for a slight dyspepsia, he had added a
few additional blocks to his morning and evening walk, and
it was while he was performing this self-inflicted penance
that he came upon Gabriel, who was hastening toward him
in behalf of John Henry.

For an instant a gleam of light shone on Cyrus's features,
and they stood out, palely illuminated, like the features of a
bronze statue above which a torch suddenly flares. His
shoulders, which stooped until his coat had curved in the
back, straightened themselves with a jerk, while he held
out his hand, on which an old sabre cut was still visible.
This faded

scar had always seemed to Gabriel the solitary proof
that the great man was created of flesh and blood.

"I've come about a little matter of business," began the
rector in an apologetic tone, for in Cyrus's presence he
was never without an uneasy feeling that the problems of
the spirit were secondary to the problems of finance.

"Well, I'm just going into the office. Come in and sit
down. I'm glad to see you. You bring back the four
happiest years of my life, Gabriel."

"And of mine, too. It's queer, isn't it, how the savage
seems to sleep in the most peaceable of men? We were
half starved in those days, half naked, and without the
certainty that we'd live until sunset - but, dreadful as it
sounds, I was happier then - God help me! - than I've
ever been before or since."

Passing through an outer office, where a number of
young men were bending over ledgers, they entered
Cyrus's private room, and sat down in two plain pine chairs
under the coloured lithograph of an engine which
ornamented the largest space on the wall. The room was
bare of the most ordinary comforts, as though its owner
begrudged the few dollars he must spend to improve his
surroundings.

"Well, those days are over, and you say it's business that
you've come about?" retorted Cyrus, not rudely, but with
the manner of a man who seldom wastes words and whose
every expenditure either of time or of money must achieve
some definite result.

"Yes, it's business." The rector's tone had chilled a little,
and he added in spite of his judgment, "I'm afraid it's a
favour. Everybody comes begging to you, I suppose?"

"Then, it's the Sunday-school picnic, I reckon. I haven't
forgotten it. Smithson!" An alert young man appeared at
the door. "Make a note that Mr. Pendleton wants coaches
for the Saint James' Church picnic on the twenty-ninth.
You said twenty-ninth, didn't you, Gabriel?"

"If the weather's good," replied Gabriel meekly, and
then as Smithson withdrew, he glanced nervously at the
lithograph of the engine. "But it wasn't about the picnic that
I came," he said. "The fact is, I wanted to ask you to use
your influence in the matter of getting John Henry a place in
the bank. He has done very well at the night school, and I
believe that you would find him entirely satisfactory."

At the first mention of the bank, a look of distrust crept
into Cyrus's face - a look cautious, alert, suspicious, such
as he wore at directors' meetings when there was a chance
that something might be got out of him if for a minute he
were to go off his guard.

"I feel a great responsibility for him," resumed Gabriel
almost sternly, though he was painfully aware that his
assurance had deserted him.

"Why don't you go to James? James is the one to see
about such a matter."

If the rector had spoken the thought in his mind, he
would have answered, "Because James reminds me of a
fish and I can't abide him"; but instead, he replied simply, "I
know James so slightly that I don't feel in a position to ask
a favour of him."

The expression of suspicion left Cyrus's face, and he
relaxed from the strained attitude in which he had sat ever
since the Sunday-school picnic had been dismissed from
the conversation. Leaning back in his

chair, he drew two cigars from the pocket of his coat, and
after glancing a little reluctantly at them both, offered one to
the rector. "I believe he really wanted me to refuse it!"
flashed through Gabriel's mind like an arrow - though the
other's hesitation had been, in fact, only an unconscious
trick of manner which he had acquired during the long lean
years when he had fattened chiefly by not giving away. The
gift of a cigar could mean nothing to a man who willingly
contributed to every charity in town, but the trivial gestures
that accompany one's early habits occasionally outlast the
peculiar circumstances from which they spring.

For a few minutes they smoked in silence. Then Cyrus
remarked in his precise voice: "James is a clever
fellow - a clever fellow."

"I've heard that he is as good as right hand to you. That's
a fine thing to say of a son."

"Yes, I don't know what I should do without James.
He's a saving hand, and, I tell you, there are more fortunes
made by saving than by gambling."

"Well, I don't think James need ever give you any
concern on that account," replied Gabriel, not without
gentle satire, for he recalled several unpleasant encounters
with the younger Treadwell on the subject of charity. "But
I've heard different tales of that nephew of yours who has
just come back from God knows what country."

"George kept free of women and attended to his affairs,"
returned Cyrus, who was as frank about his family as he
was secretive about his business.

"But what about Henry's son? He's a promising chap,
isn't he?"

"It depends upon what you call promising, I reckon.
Before he came I thought of putting him into the bank, but
since I've seen him, I can't, for the life of me, think of
anything to do with him. Unless, of course, you could see
your way toward taking him into the ministry," he
concluded with sardonic humour.

"His views on theology would prevent that, I fear,"
replied the rector, while all the kindly little wrinkles leaped
out around his eyes.

"Views? What do anybody's views matter who can't
make a living? But to tell the truth, there's something about
him that I don't trust. He isn't like Henry, so he must take
after that pretty fool Henry married. Now, if he had
James's temper, I could make something out of him, but
he's different - he's fly-up-the-creek - he's as flighty as a
woman."

Gabriel, who had been a little cheered to learn that the
young man, with all his faults, did not resemble James,
hastened to assure Cyrus that there might be some good in
the boy, after all - that he was only twenty-two, and that,
in any case, it was too soon to pass judgment.

"I can't stand his talk," returned the other grimly. "I've
never heard anybody but a preacher - I beg your pardon,
Gabriel, nothing personal! - who could keep going so long
when nobody was listening. A mere wind-bag, that's what
he is, with a lot of nonsensical ideas about his own
importance. If there

wasn't a girl in the house, it would be no great matter, but
that Susan of mine is so headstrong that I'm half afraid
she'll get crazy and imagine she's fallen in love with him."

This proof of parental anxiety touched Gabriel in his
tenderest spot. After all, though Cyrus had a harsh
surface, there was much good at the bottom of him. "I can
enter into your feelings about that," he answered
sympathetically, "though my Jinny, I am
sure, would never allow herself to think seriously
about a man without first asking my opinion of him."

"Then you're fortunate," commented Cyrus dryly, "for I
don't believe Susan would give a red cent for what I'd
think if she once took a fancy. She'd as soon elope with
that wild-eyed scamp as eat her dinner, if it once entered
her head."

A knock came at the door, and Smithson entered and
conferred with his employer over a telegram, while Gabriel
rose to his feet.

"By the way," said Cyrus, turning abruptly from his
secretary and stopping the rector as he was about to pass
out of the door, "I was just wondering if you remembered
the morning after Lee's surrender, when we started home
on the road together?"

"Why, yes." There was a note of surprise in Gabriel's
answer, for he remembered, also, that he had sold his
watch a little later in the day to a Union soldier, and had
divided the eighty dollars with Cyrus. For an instant, he
almost believed that the other was going to allude for the
first time to that incident.

"Well, I've never forgotten that green persimmon tree
by the roadside," pursued the great man, "and the way
you stopped under it and said, 'O Lord, wilt

"No, I'd forgotten it," rejoined Gabriel coolly, for he was
hurt by the piece of flippancy and was thinking the worst of
Cyrus again.

"You'd forgotten it? Well, I've a long memory, and I
never forget. That's one thing you may count on me for,"
he added, "a good memory. As for John Henry - I'll see
James about it. I'll see what James has to say."

When Gabriel had gone, accompanied as far as the
outer door by the secretary, Cyrus turned back to the
window, and stood gazing over a steep street or two, and
past the gabled roof of an old stone house, to where in the
distance the walls of the new building of the Treadwell
Tobacco Company were rising. Around the skeleton
structure he could see the workmen moving like ants, while
in a widening circle of air the smoke of other factories
floated slowly upward under a brazen sky. "There are too
many of them," he thought bitterly. "It's competition that
kills. There are too many of them."

So rapt was his look while he stood there that there
came into his face an expression of yearning sentiment that
made it almost human. Then his gaze wandered to the
gleaming tracks of the two great railroads which ran out of
Dinwiddie toward the north, uncoiling their length like
serpents between the broad fields sprinkled with the tender
green of young crops. Beside them trailed the ashen
country roads over which farmers were crawling with their
covered wagons; but, while Cyrus watched from his height,
there was as little thought in his mind for the men who drove

those wagons through the parching dust as for the beasts
that drew them. It is possible even that he did not
see them, for just as Mrs. Pendleton's vision eliminated the
sight of suffering because her heart was too tender to bear
it, so he overlooked all facts except those which were a
part of the dominant motive of his life. Nearer still,
within the narrow board fences which
surrounded the backyards of negro hovels, under the
moving shadows of broad-leaved mulberry or sycamore
trees, he gazed down on the swarms of mulatto children;
though to his mind that problem, like the problem of labour,
loomed vague, detached, and unreal - a thing that existed
merely in the air, not in the concrete images that he could
understand.

"Well, it's a pity Gabriel never made more of himself," he
thought kindly. "Yes, it's a pity. I'll see what I can do for
him."

At six o'clock that evening, when the end of his business
day had come, he joined James at the door for his walk
back to Bolingbroke Street.

"Have you done anything about Jones's place in the
bank?" was the first question he asked after his abrupt nod
of greeting.

"No, sir. I thought you were waiting to find out about
Oliver."

"Then you thought wrong. The fellow's a fool. Look up
that nephew of Gabriel Pendleton, and see if he is fit for the
job. I am sorry Jones is dead," he added with a touch of
feeling. "I remember I got him that place the year after the
war, and I never knew him to be ten minutes late during all
the time that I worked with him."

James after a pause. "Of course he wouldn't be much
good in the bank, but - "

And without finishing his sentence, he glanced up in a
tentative, non-committal manner into Cyrus's face. He was
a smaller and somewhat imperfect copy of his father,
naturally timid, and possessed of a superstitious feeling that
he should die in an accident. His thin anæmic features
lacked the strength of the Treadwells, though in his cautious
and taciturn way he was very far indeed from being the fool
people generally thought him. Since he had never loved
anything with passion except money, he was regarded by
his neighbours as a man of unimpeachable morality.

At the end of the block, while the long pointed shadows
of their feet kept even pace on the stone crossing, Cyrus
answered abruptly: "Put him anywhere out of my sight. I
can't bear the look of him."

"How would you like to give him something to do on the
road? Put him under Borrows, for instance, and let him
learn a bit about freight?"

"Well, I don't care. Only don't let me see him - he turns
my stomach."

"Then as long as we've got to support him, I'll tell him he
may try his hand at the job of assistant freight agent, if he
wants to earn his keep."

"He'll never do that - just as well put him down under
'waste,' and have done with him," replied Cyrus,
chuckling.

A little girl, rolling a hoop, tripped and fell at his feet,
and he nodded at her kindly, for he had a strong physical
liking for children, though he had never stopped to think
about them in a human or personal

way. He had, indeed, never stopped to think about anything
except the absorbing problem of how to make something
out of nothing. Everything else, even his marriage, had made
merely a superficial impression upon him. What people
called his "luck" was only the relentless pursuit of an idea;
and in this pursuit all other sides of his nature had been
sapped of energy. From the days when he had humbly
accepted small commissions from the firm of Machlin&
Company, to the last few years, when he had come to be
regarded almost superstitiously as the saviour of sinking
properties, he had moved quietly, cautiously, and
unswervingly in one direction. The blighting panic of ten
years before had hardly touched him, so softly had he
ventured, and so easy was it for him to return to his little
deals and his diet of crumbs. They were bad times, those
years, alike for rich and poor, for Northerner and
Southerner; but in the midst of crashing firms and noiseless
factories, he had cut down his household expenses to a
pittance and had gone on as secretively as ever - waiting,
watching, hoping, until the worst was over and Machlin&
Company had found their man. Then, a little later, with the
invasion of the cigarette, there went up the new Treadwell
factory which the subtle minded still attributed to the genius
of Cyrus. Even before George and Henry had sailed for
Australia, the success of the house in Dinwiddie was
assured. There was hardly a drug store in America in those
days that did not offer as its favourite James's crowning
triumph, the Magnolia cigarette. A few years later,
competition came like a whirlwind, but in the beginning the
Treadwell brand held the market

"Heard from George lately?" he inquired, when they had
traversed, accompanied by their long and narrow shadows,
another couple of blocks. The tobacco trade had always
been for him merely a single pawn in the splendid game he
was playing, but he had suspected recently that James felt
something approaching a sentiment for the Magnolia
cigarette, and true to the Treadwell scorn of romance, he
was forever trying to trick him into an admission of guilt.

"Not since that letter I showed you a month ago,"
answered James. "Too much competition, that's the story
everywhere. They are flooding the market with cigarettes,
and if it wasn't for the way the Magnolia holds on, we'd be
swamped in little or no time."

"Well, I reckon the Claypole would pull us through,"
commented Cyrus. The Claypole was an old brand of plug
tobacco with which the first Treadwell factory had started.
"But you're right about competition. It's got to stop or we'll
be driven clean out of the business."

He drew out his latchkey as he spoke, for they had
reached the corner of Bolingbroke Street, and the small
dingy house in which they lived was only a few doors
away. As they passed between the two blossoming
oleanders in green tubs on the sidewalk, James glanced up
at the flat square roof, and observed doubtfully, "You'll be
getting out of this old place before long now, I reckon."

"Oh, someday, someday," answered Cyrus. "There'll be
time enough when the market settles and we can see
where the money is coming from."

father this question, and once every year he received
exactly the same answer. In his mind, Cyrus was always
putting off the day when he should move into a larger
house, for though he got richer every week, he never
seemed to get quite rich enough to commit himself to any
definite change in his circumstances. Of course, in the
nature of things, he knew that he ought to have left
Bolingbroke Street long ago; there was hardly a family still
living there with whom his daughter associated, and she
complained daily of having to pass saloons and barber
shops whenever she went out of doors. But the truth was
that in spite of his answer to James's annual question,
neither of them wanted to move away from the old home,
and each hoped in his heart that he should never be forced
into doing so. Cyrus had become wedded to the house as a
man becomes wedded to a habit, and since the clinging to a
habit was the only form of sentiment of which he was
capable, he shrank more and more from what he felt to be
the almost unbearable wrench of moving. A certain fidelity
of purpose, the quality which had lifted him above the petty
provincialism that crippled James, made the display of
wealth as obnoxious to him as the possession of it was
agreeable. As long as he was conscious that he controlled
the industrial future of Dinwiddie, it was a matter of
indifference to him whether people supposed him to be a
millionaire or a pauper. In time he would probably have to
change his way of living and put an end to his life-long
practice of saving; but, meanwhile, he was quite content to
go on year after year mending the roof and the chimneys of
the old house into which he had moved the week after his
marriage.

Entering the hall, he hung his hat on the walnut hat-rack in
the dark corner behind the door, and followed the worn
strip of blue and red oilcloth which ran up the narrow
staircase to the floor above. Where the staircase bent
sharply in the middle, the old-fashioned mahogany
balustrade shone richly in the light of a gas-jet which jutted
out on a brass stem from the wall. Although a window on
the upper floor was opened wide to the sunset, the interior
of the house had a close musty smell, as if it had been shut
up, uninhabited, for months. Cyrus had never noticed the
smell, for his senses, which were never acute, had been
rendered even duller than usual by custom.

At the top of the stairs, a coloured washerwoman,
accompanied by a bright mulatto boy, who carried an
empty clothes basket on his head, waited humbly in the
shadow for the two men to pass. She was a dark glistening
creature, with ox-like eyes, and the remains of a handsome
figure, now running to fat.

"Howdy, Marster," she murmured under her breath as
Cyrus reached her, to which he responded brusquely,
"Howdy, Mandy," while he glanced with unseeing eyes at
the mulatto boy at her side. Then, as he walked rapidly
down the hall, with James at his heels, the woman turned
back for a minute and gazed after him with an expression
of animal submission and acquiescence. So little personal
to Cyrus and so free from individual consciousness was
this look, that it seemed less the casual glance from a
servant to a master than the intimate aspect of a primitive
racial attitude toward life.

At the end of the hall, beyond the open door of the
bedroom (which he still occupied with his wife from

an ineradicable conviction that all respectable married
persons slept together no matter how uncomfortable they
might be), Cyrus discerned the untidy figure of Mrs.
Treadwell reflected in a mirror before which she stood
brushing her back hair straight up from her neck to a small
round knot on the top of her head. She was a slender,
flat-chested woman, whose clothes, following some natural
bent of mind, appeared never to be put on quite straight or
properly hooked and buttoned. It was as if she perpetually
dressed in a panic, forgetting to fasten her placket, to put
on her collar or to mend the frayed edges of her skirt.
When she went out, she still made some spasmodic
attempts at neatness; but Susan's untiring efforts and
remonstrances had never convinced her that it mattered
how one looked in the house - except indeed when a
formal caller arrived, for whom she hastily tied a scarf at
the neck of her dirty basque and flung a purple wool shawl
over her shoulders. Her spirit had been too long broken for
her to rebel consciously against her daughter's authority;
but her mind was so constituted that the sense of order was
missing, and the pretty coquetry of youth, which had
masqueraded once as the more enduring quality of
self-respect, was extinguished in the five and thirty penitential
years of her marriage. She had a small vacant face, where
the pink and white had run into muddiness, a mouth that
sagged at the corners like the mouth of a frightened child,
and eyes of a sickly purple, which had been compared by
Cyrus to "sweet violets," in the only compliment he ever
paid her. Thirty-five years ago, in one of those attacks of
indiscretion which overtake the most careful man in the
spring, Cyrus

had proposed to her; and when she declined him, he had
immediately repeated his offer, animated less by any active
desire to possess her, than by the dogged male
determination to over-ride all obstacles, whether feminine
or financial. And pretty Belinda Bolingbroke, being alone
and unsupported by other suitors at the instant, had
entwined herself instinctively around the nearest male prop
that offered. It had been one of those marriages of
opposites which people (ignoring the salient fact that love
has about as much part in it as it has in the pursuit of a
spring chicken by a hawk) speak of with sentiment as "a
triumph of love over differences." Even in the first days of
their engagement, there could be found no better reason for
their marriage than the meeting of Cyrus's stubborn
propensity to have his way with the terror of imaginary
spinsterhood which had seized Belinda in a temporary lapse
of suitors. Having married, they immediately proceeded, as
if by mutual consent, to make the worst of it. She, poor
fluttering dove-like creature, had lost hope at the first
rebuff, and had let go all the harmless little sentiments that
had sweetened her life; while he, having married a dove by
choice and because of her doveliness, had never forgiven
her that she did not develop into a brisk, cackling hen of the
barnyard. As usually happens in the cases where "love
triumphs over differences," he had come at last to hate her
for the very qualities which had first caught his fancy. His
ideal woman (though he was perfectly unconscious that she
existed) was a managing thrifty soul, in a starched calico
dress, with a natural capacity for driving a bargain; and Life,
with grim humour, had rewarded this respectable

preference by bestowing upon him feeble and insipid
Belinda, who spent sleepless nights trying to add three and
five together, but who could never, to save her soul,
remember to put down the household expenses in the petty
cash book. It was a case, he sometimes told himself, of a
man, who had resisted temptation all his life, being punished
for one instant's folly more harshly than if he were a
practiced libertine. No libertine, indeed, could have got
himself into such a scrape, for none would have
surrendered so completely to a single manifestation of the
primal force. To play the fool once, he reflected bitterly,
when his brief intoxication was over, is after all more costly
than to play it habitually. Had he pursued a different pair of
violet eyes every evening, he would never have ended by
embracing the phantom that was Belinda.

But it was more than thirty years since Cyrus had taken
the trouble to turn his unhappiness into philosophy - for,
aided by time, he had become reconciled to his wife as a
man becomes reconciled to a physical infirmity. Except for
that one eventful hour in April, women had stood for so
little in his existence, that he had never stopped to wonder
if his domestic relations might have been pleasanter had he
gone about the business of selection as carefully as he
picked and chose the tobacco for his factory. Even the
streak of sensuality in his nature did not run warm as in the
body of an ordinary mortal, and his vices, like his virtues,
had become so rarefied in the frozen air of his intelligence
that they were no longer recognizable as belonging to the
common frailties of men.

at his wife as he entered - for having long ago lost his pride
of possession in her, he had ceased to regard her as of
sufficient importance to merit the ordinary civilities.

"I was helping Miss Willy whip one of Susan's
flounces," she answered, turning from the mirror, with the
hairbrush held out like a peace offering before her. "We
wanted to get through to-day," she added nervously, "so
Miss Willy can start on Jinny Pendleton's dress the first
thing in the morning."

If Cyrus had ever permitted himself the consolation of
doubtful language, he would probably have exclaimed with
earnestness, "Confound Miss Willy!" but he came of a
stock which condemned an oath, or even an expletive, on
its face value, so this natural outlet for his irritation was
denied him. Instead, therefore, of replying in words, he
merely glanced sourly at the half-open door, through which
issued the whirring noise of the little dressmaker at her
sewing. Now and then, in the intervals when her feet left
the pedal, she could be heard humming softly to herself
with her mouth full of pins.

"Isn't she going?" asked Cyrus presently, while he
washed his hands at the washstand in one corner and dried
them on a towel which Belinda had elaborately
embroidered in red. Peering through the crack of the door
as he put the question, he saw Miss Willy hurriedly pulling
basting threads out of a muslin skirt, and the fluttering
bird-like motions of her hands increased the singular feeling of
repulsion with which she inspired him. Though he was
aware that she was an entirely harmless person, and,
moreover, that her "days" supplied the only companionship

his wife really enjoyed, he resented angrily the weeks
of work and gossip which the little seamstress spent under
his roof. Put two gabbling women like that together and
you could never tell what stories would be set going about
you before evening! A suspicion, unfortunately too well
founded, that his wife had whimpered out her heart to the
whirring accompaniment of Miss Willy's machine, had
caused him once or twice to rise in his authority and forbid
the dressmaker the house; but, in doing so, he had
reckoned without the strength which may lie in an
unscrupulous weakness. Belinda, who had never fought for
anything else in her life, refused absolutely to give up her
dressmaker. "If I can't see her here, I'll go to her house,"
she had said, and Cyrus had yielded at last as the bully
always yields before the frenzied violence of his victim.

After a hasty touch to the four round flat curls on her
forehead, Mrs. Treadwell turned from the bureau with her
habitually hopeless air, and slipped her thin arms into the
tight sleeves of a black silk basque which she took up from
the bed.

"Did you see Oliver when you came in?" she asked. "He
was in here looking for you a few minutes ago."

"No, I didn't see him, but I'm going to. He's got to give
up this highfaluting nonsense of his if he expects me to
support him. There's one thing the fellow's got to
understand, and that is that he can choose between his
precious stuff and his bread and meat. Before I give him a
job, he'll have to let me see that he is done with all this
business of play-writing."

indifferently glancing at her as he finished, he was
arrested by something enigmatical and yet familiar in
her features. A dim vision of the way she had looked at
him in the early days of their marriage floated an instant
before him.

"Do you think he wants to do that?" she asked with
a little sound as if she had drawn her breath so
sharply that it whistled. What in thunder was the
matter with the woman? he wondered irritably. Of course
she was a fool about the scamp - all the women, even
Susan, lost their heads over him - but, after all, why
should it make any difference to her whether he wrote
plays or took freight orders, as long as he managed to
feed himself?

"Well, I don't reckon it has come to a question of what
he wants," he rejoined shortly.

"But the boy's heart is bound up in his ambition,"
urged Belinda, with an energy he had witnessed in her only
once before in her life, and that was on the occasion of her
historic defence of the seamstress.

For a moment Cyrus stared at her with attention, almost
with curiosity. Then he opened his lips for a crushing
rejoinder, but thinking better of his impulse, merely
repeated dryly, "His heart?" before he turned toward the
door. On the threshold he looked back and added, "The
next time you see him, tell him I'd like a word with him."

Left alone in her room, Mrs. Treadwell sat down in a
rocking-chair by the window and clasped her hands tightly
in her lap with a nervous gesture which she had acquired in
long periods of silent waiting on destiny Her mental
attitude, which was one of secret, and usually passive,
antagonism to her husband, had

stamped its likeness so indelibly upon her features, that,
sitting there in the wan light, she resembled a woman who
suffers from the effects of some slow yet deadly sickness.
Lacking the courage to put her revolt into words, she had
allowed it to turn inward and embitter the hidden sources
of her being. In the beginning she had asked so little of life
that the denial of that little by Fate had appeared niggardly
rather than tragic. A man - any man who would have lent
himself gracefully as an object of worship - would have
been sufficient material for the building of her
happiness. Marriage, indeed, had always appeared to
her so desirable as an end in itself, entirely apart from the
personal peculiarities or possibilities of a husband, that she
had awakened almost with surprise one morning to the
knowledge that she was miserable. It was not so much
that her romance had met with open disaster as that it had
simply faded away. This gradual fading away of sentiment,
which she had accepted at the time as only one of the
inevitable stages in the slow process of emotional
adjustment, would perhaps have made but a passing
impression on a soul to whom every other outlet into the
world had not been closed by either temperament or
tradition. But love had been the one window through which
light could enter her house of Life; and when this darkened,
her whole nature had sickened and grown morbid. Then at
last all the corroding bitterness in her heart had gathered to
a canker which ached ceaselessly, like a physical sore, in
her breast.

"He saw I'd taken to Oliver - that's why he's anxious to
spite him," she thought resentfully as she stared with
unseeing eyes out into the gray twilight.

"It's all just to worry me, that's why he is doing it. He
knows I couldn't be any fonder of the boy if he had come
of my own blood." And she who had been a Bolingbroke
set her thin lips together with the only consciousness of
superiority to her husband that she had ever known - the
secret consciousness that she was better born. Out of the
wreck of her entire life, this was the floating spar to which
she still clung with a sense of security, and her imagination,
by long concentration upon the support that it offered, had
exaggerated its importance out of all proportion to the
other props among which it had its place. Like its imposing
symbol, the Saint Memin portrait of the great Archibald
Bolingbroke, which lent distinction, by its very
inappropriateness, to the wall on which it hung, this hidden
triumph imparted a certain pathetic dignity to her manner.

"That's all on earth it is," she repeated with a kind of
smothered fierceness. But, even while the words were on
her lips, her face changed and softened, for in the adjoining
room a voice, full of charm, could be heard saying:
"Sewing still, Miss Willy? Don't you know that you are
guilty of an immoral act when you work overtime?"

"I'm just this minute through, Mr. Oliver," answered the
seamstress in fluttering tones. "As soon as I fold this skirt,
I'm going to quit and put on my bonnet."

A few more words followed, and then the door
opened wider and Oliver entered - with his ardent eyes,
his irresolute mouth, and his physical charm which brought
an air of vital well-being into the depressing sultriness of
the room.

"I missed you downstairs, Aunt Belinda. You haven't a
headache, I hope," he said, and there was the same
caressing kindness in his tone which he had used to the
dressmaker. It was as if his sympathy, like his charm,
which cost him so little because it was the gift of Nature,
overflowed in every casual expression of his temperament.

"No, I haven't a headache, dear," replied Mrs.
Treadwell, putting up her hand to his cheek as he leaned
over her. "Your uncle is waiting for you in the library, so
you'd better go down at once," she added, catching her
breath as she had done when Cyrus first spoke to her
about Oliver.

"Have you any idea what it means? Did he tell you?"

"Yes, he wants to talk to you about business."

"The deuce he does! Well, if that's it, I'd be precious
glad to get out of it. You don't suppose I could cut it, do
you? Susan is going to take me to the Pendletons' after
supper, and I'd like to run upstairs now and make a
change."

"No, you'd better go down to him. He doesn't like to
be kept waiting."

"All right, then - since you say so."

Meeting the dressmaker on the threshold, he forgot to
answer her deprecating bow in his eagerness to have the
conversation with Cyrus over and done with.

"I declare, he does startle a body when you ain't
used to him," observed Miss Willy, with a bashful
giggle. She was a diminutive, sparrow-like creature, with a
natural taste for sick-rooms and death-beds, and an
inexhaustible fund of gossip. As Mrs. Treadwell, for once,
did not respond to her unspoken invitation

to chat, she tied her bonnet strings under her sharp
little chin, and taking up her satchel went out again, after
repeating several times that she would be "back the very
minute Mrs. Pendleton was through with her." A few
minutes later, Belinda, still seated by the window, saw the
shrunken figure ascend the area steps and cross the dusty
street with a rapid and buoyant step, as though she, also,
plain, overworked and penniless, was feeling the delicious
restlessness of the spring in her blood. "I wonder what on
earth she's got to make her skip like that," thought Belinda
not without bitterness. "I reckon she thinks she's just as
important as anybody," she added after an instant, touching,
though she was unaware of it, the profoundest truth of
philosophy. "She's got nothing in the world but herself, yet I
reckon to her that is everything, even if it doesn't make a
particle of difference to anybody else whether she is living
or dead."

Her eyes were still on Miss Willy, who stepped on
briskly, swinging her bag joyously before her, when the
sound of Cyrus's voice, raised high in anger, came up to
her from the library. A short silence followed; then a door
opened and shut quickly, and rapid footsteps passed up
the staircase and along the hall outside of her room. While
she waited, overcome by the nervous indecision which
attacked her like palsy she was forced to take a definite
action, Susan ran up the stairs and called her name in a
startled and shaking voice.

"Oh, mother, father has quarrelled dreadfully with Oliver
and ordered him out of the house!"

CHAPTER V
OLIVER, THE ROMANTIC
AN HOUR later Oliver stood before the book-shelves in
his room, wrapping each separate volume in newspapers.
Downstairs in the basement, he knew, the family were at
supper, but he had vowed, in his splendid scorn of material
things, that he would never eat another morsel under
Cyrus's roof. Even when his aunt, trembling in every limb,
had brought him secretly from the kitchen a cup of coffee
and a plate of waffles, he had refused to unlock his door
and permit her to enter. "I'll come out when I am ready to
leave," he had replied to her whispered entreaties.

It was a small room, furnished chiefly by bookshelves,
which were still unfinished, and with a depressing view from
a single window of red tin roofs and blackened chimneys.
Above the chimneys a narrow band of sky, spangled with a
few stars, was visible from where Oliver stood, and now
and then he stopped in his work and gazed up at it with an
exalted and resolute look. Sometimes a thin shred of
smoke floated in from the kitchen chimney, and hung, as if
drawn and held there by some magnetic attraction, around
the kerosene lamp on a corner of the washstand. The
sultriness of the night, which was oppressive even in the
street, was almost stifling in the little room with its scant
western exposure.

But the flame burning in Oliver's breast had purged away
such petty considerations as those for material comforts. He
had risen above the heat, above the emptiness of his
pockets, above the demands of his stomach. It was a
matter of complete indifference to him whether he slept in a
house or out of doors, whether he ate or went hungry. His
exaltation was so magnificent that while it lasted he felt that
he had conquered the physical universe. He was strong! He
was free! And it was characteristic of his sanguine intellect
that the future should appear to him at the instant as
something which existed not beyond him, but actually within
his grasp. Anger had liberated his spirit as even art had not
done; and he felt that all the blood in his body had rushed to
his brain and given him the mastery over circumstances. He
forgot yesterday as easily as he evaded to-day and
subjugated to-morrow. The past, with its starved ambitions,
its tragic failures, its blighting despondencies, melted away
from him into obscurity; and he remembered only the brief
alternating hours of ecstasy and of accomplishment. With
his wind-blown, flamelike temperament, oscillating in the
heat of youth between the inclinations he miscalled
convictions, he was still, though Cyrus had disowned him,
only a romantic variation from the Treadwell stock.
Somewhere, in the depths of his being, the essential
Treadwell persisted. He hated Cyrus as a man hates his
own weakness; he revolted from materialism as only a
materialist in youth revolts.

A knock came at his door, and pausing, with a volume
of Heine still unwrapped in his hand, he waited in silence
until his visitor should retire down

the stairs. But instead of Mrs. Treadwell's trembling tones,
he heard, after a moment, the firm and energetic voice of
Susan.

"Oliver, I must speak to you. If you won't unlock your
door, I'll sit down on the steps and wait until you come
out."

"I'm packing my books. I wish you'd go away, Susan."

"I haven't the slightest intention of going away until I've
talked with you" and, then, being one of those persons
who are born with the natural gift of their own way, she
laid her hand on the doorknob while Oliver impatiently
turned the key in the lock.

"Since you are here, you might as well come in and
help," he remarked none too graciously, as he made way
for her to enter.

"Of course I'll help you - but, oh, Oliver, what in the
world are you going to do?"

"I haven't thought. I'm too busy, but I'll manage
somehow."

"Father was terrible. I heard him all the way upstairs in
my room. But," she looked at him a little doubtfully, "don't
you think he will get over it?"

"He may, but I shan't. I'd rather starve than live under a
petty tyranny like that?"

"I know," she nodded, and he saw that she understood
him. It was wonderful how perfectly, from the very first
instant, she had understood him. She grasped things, too,
by intelligence, not by intuition, and he found this refreshing
in an age when the purely feminine was in fashion. Never
had he seen a finer example of young, buoyant, conquering

womanhood - of womanhood freed from the consciousness
and the disabilities of sex. "She's not the sort
of girl a man would lose his head over," he reflected;
"there's too little of the female about her - she's as free
from coquetry as she is from the folderol of sentimentality.
She's a free spirit, and God knows how she ever came out
of the Treadwells." Her beauty even wasn't of the kind that
usually goes by the name. He didn't suppose there were
ten men in Dinwiddie who would turn to look back at
her - but, by Jove, if she hadn't beauty, she had the
character that lends an even greater distinction. She
looked as if she could ride Life like a horse - could master
it and tame it and break it to the bridle.

"It's amazing how you know things, Susan," he said,
"and you've never been outside of Dinwiddie."

"But I've wanted to, and I sometimes think the wanting
teaches one more than the going."

He thought over this for an instant, and then, as if the
inner flame which consumed him had leaped suddenly to
the surface, he burst out joyously: "I've come to the
greatest decision of my life in this last hour, Susan."

Her eyes shone. "You mean you've decided not to do
what father asks no matter what happens?"

"I've decided not to accept his conditions - no matter
what happens," he answered.

"Oh, I can easily make thirty dollars a month by
reviewing German books for New York papers, and I dare
say I can manage to pull through on that. I'll have to stay in
Dinwiddie, of course, because I couldn't live anywhere else
on nearly so little, and, besides, I shouldn't be able to buy a
ticket away."

"That will be twenty dollars for your board," said the
practical Susan, "and you will have to make ten dollars a
month cover all your other expenses. Do you think you can
do it?"

"I've got to. Better men have done worse things, haven't
they? Better men have done worse things and written great
plays while they were about them."

"I believe Mrs. Peachey would let you have a back
room and board for that," pursued Susan. "But it will cost
you something to get your books moved and the shelves
put up there."

"As soon as I get through this I'll go over and see her.
Oh, I'm free, Susan, I'm happy! Did you ever see an
absolutely happy man before? I feel as if a weight had
rolled off my shoulders. I'm tired - dog-tired of
compromise and commercialism and all the rest
of it. I've got something to say to the world, and I'll
go out and make my bed in the gutter before I'll forfeit the
opportunity of saying it. Do you know what that means,
Susan? Do you know what it is to be willing to give your
life if only you can speak out the thing that is inside of you?"
The colour in his face mounted to his forehead, while his
eyes grew black with emotion. In the smoky little room,
Youth, with its fierce revolts, its impassioned egoism, its
inextinguishable faith in itself, delivered its ultimatum

to Life. "I've got to be true to myself, Susan! A
man who won't starve for his ambition isn't worth his salt, is
he? And, besides, the best work is all done not in plenty,
but in poverty - the most perfect art has grown from the
poorest soil. If I were to accept Uncle Cyrus's offer, I'd
grow soft to the core in a month and be of no more use
than a rotten apple."

His conviction lent a golden ring to his voice, and so
winning to Susan was the impetuous flow of his words, that
she felt herself swept away from all the basic common
sense of her character. She saw his ambition as clearly as
he saw it; she weighed his purpose, as he weighed it, in the
imaginary scales of his judgment; she accepted his estimate
of his powers as passionately as he accepted it.

"Of course you mustn't give up, Oliver; you couldn't,"
she said.

"You're right, I couldn't."

"If you can get steady reviewing, I believe you can
manage," she resumed. "Living in Dinwiddie costs really so
very little." Her voice thrilled suddenly. "It must be beautiful
to have something that you feel about like this. Oh, I wish I
were you, Oliver! I wish a thousand times I were you!"

Withdrawing his eyes from the sky at which he had been
gazing, he turned to look at her as if her words had
arrested him. "You're a dear girl," he answered kindly,
"and I think all the world of you." As he spoke he thought
again what a fine thing it would be for the man who could
fall in love with her. "It would be the best thing that could
happen to any man to marry a woman like that," he
reflected; "she'd keep him up to the mark and never let him

grow soft. Yes, it would be all right if only one could
manage to fall in love with her - but I couldn't. She might as
well be a rose-bush for all the passion she'd ever arouse in
me." Then his charming egoism asserted itself, and he said
caressingly: "I don't believe I could stand Dinwiddie but
for you, Susan."

She smiled back at him, but there was a limpid clearness
in her look which made him feel that she had seen through
him while he was thinking. This clearness, with its utter
freedom from affectation or sentimentality, embarrassed
him by its unlikeness to all the attributes he mentally
classified as feminine. To look straight seemed to him
almost as unwomanly as to throw straight, and Susan
would, doubtless, be quite capable of performing either of
these difficult feats. He liked her fine brow under the short
fringe, which he hated, and he liked the arched bridge of
her nose and the generous curve of her mouth. Yet had he
stopped to analyze her, he would probably have said that
the woman spirit in her was expressed through character
rather than through emotion - a manifestation disconcerting
to one whose vision of her sex was chiefly as the
irresponsible creature of drama. The old shackles - even
the shackles of that drama whose mistress and slave
woman had been - were out of place on the spirit which
was incarnated in Susan. Amid the cramping customs of
the period, she moved large, free, and simple, as though
she walked already in the purer and more bracing air of the
future.

"I wish I could help you," she said, stooping to pick up a
newspaper from a pile on the floor. "Here, let me wrap
that Spinoza. I'm afraid the back will come off if you
aren't careful."

"Of course a man has to work out his own career," he
replied, as he handed over the volume. "I doubt, when it
comes to that, if anybody can be of much help to another
where his life's work is concerned. The main thing, after all,
is not to get in one's way, not to cripple one's energy. I've
got to be free - that's all there is about it. I've got to
belong to myself every instant."

"And you know already just what you are going to do?
About your writing, I mean."

"Absolutely. I've ideas enough to fill fifty ordinary
lifetimes. I'm simply seething with them. Why, that box
over there in the corner is full of plays that would start a
national drama if the fool public had sense enough to see
what they are about. The trouble is that they don't want life
on the stage; they want a kind of of theatrical wedding-cake.
And, by Jove, they get it! Any dramatist who tries
to force people to eat bread and meat when they are
crying for sugar plums may as well prepare to starve until
the public begins to suffer from acute indigestion. Then, if
he isn't dead - or, perhaps, if he is - his hour will come,
and he will get his reward either here or in heaven."

"So you'll go on just the same and wait until they're
ready for you?" asked Susan, laughing from sheer pride in
him. "You'll never, never cheapen yourself, Oliver?" For
the first time in her life she was face to face with an
intellectual passion, and she felt almost as if she herself
were inspired.

"Never. I've made my choice. I'll wait half a century if
need be, but I'll wait. I know, too, what I am talking
about, for I could do the other thing as

easily as I could eat my dinner. I've got the trick of it. I
could make a fortune to-morrow if I were to lose my
intellectual honesty and go in simply for the making of
money. Why, I am a Treadwell, after all, just as you are,
my dear cousin, and I could commercialize the stage, I
haven't a doubt, as successfully as your father has
commercialized the railroad. It's in the blood - the instinct,
you know - and the only thing that has kept it down in me is
that I sincerely - yes, I sincerely and enthusiastically believe
that I am a genius. If I didn't, do you think I'd stick at this
starvation business another fortnight? That's the whole
story, every blessed word of it, and I'm telling you because
I feel expansive to-night - I'm such a tremendous egoist,
you know, and because - well, because you are Susan."

"I think I understand a little bit how you feel," replied
Susan. "Of course, I'm not a genius, but I've thought
sometimes that I should almost be willing to starve if
only I might go to college."

Checking the words on his lips, he looked at her with
sympathy. "It's a shame you can't, but I suppose Uncle
Cyrus won't hear of it."

"I haven't asked him, but I am going to do it. I am so
afraid of a refusal - and, of course, he'll refuse -
that I've lacked the courage to speak of it."

"Good God! Why is one generation left so absolutely at
the mercy of the other?" he demanded, turning back to the
strip of sky over the roof. "It makes a man rage to think of
the lives that are spoiled for a whim. Money,
money - curse it! - it all comes to that in the end.
Money makes us and destroys us."

"Do you remember what father said to you the other
night - that you would come at last to what you called the
property idea and be exactly like James and himself?"

"If I thought that, I'd go out and hang myself. I can
understand a man selling his soul for drink, though I rarely
touch a drop, or for women, though I've never bothered
about them, but never, not even in the last extremity, for
money."

A door creaked somewhere on the second floor and a
minute afterwards the slow and hesitating feet of Mrs.
Treadwell were heard ascending the stairs.

"Let her come in just a moment, Oliver," begged Susan,
and her tone was full of the impatient, slightly arrogant
affection with which she regarded her mother. There was
little sympathy and less understanding between them, but
on Susan's side there was a feeling of protective tenderness
which was almost maternal. This tenderness was all her
own, while the touch of arrogance in her manner belonged
to the universal inability of youth to make allowances for
age.

"Oh, well," said Oliver indifferently; and going to the
door, he opened it and stood waiting for Mrs. Treadwell
to enter.

"I came up to ask if you wouldn't eat something, dear?"
she asked. "But I suppose Susan has brought you your
supper?"

"He won't touch a morsel, mother; it is useless to ask
him. He is going away just as soon as we have finished
packing."

"But where is he going? I didn't know that he had any
place to go to."

"How can you take it so lightly, Susan," protested Mrs.
Treadwell, beginning to cry.

"That's the only sensible way to take it, isn't it Oliver?"
asked Susan, gaily.

"Don't get into a fidget about me, Aunt Belinda," said
Oliver, pushing the pile of newspapers out of her way,
while she sat down nervously on the end of a packing-case
and wiped her eyes on the fringe of her purple shawl. The
impulsive kindness with which he had spoken to her a few
hours before had vanished from his tone, and left in its
place an accent of irritation. His sympathy, which was
never assumed, resulted so entirely from his mood that it
was practically independent of the person or situation
which appeared to inspire it. There were moments when,
because of a sensation of mental or physical well-being, he
overflowed with a feeling of tenderness for the beggar at
the crossing; and there were longer periods, following a
sudden despondency, when the suffering of his closest
friend aroused in him merely a sense of personal outrage.
So complete, indeed, was his absorption in himself, that
even his philosophy was founded less upon an intellectual
conception of the universe than it was upon an intense
preoccupation with his own personality.

"But you don't mean that you are going for good? -
that you'll never come back to see Susan and me again?"
whimpered his aunt, while her sagging mouth trembled.

"You can't expect me to come back after the things
Uncle Cyrus has said to me."

A look so bitter that it was almost venomous crept into
Mrs. Treadwell's face. "He just did it to worry

me, Oliver. He has done everything he could think of to
worry me ever since he persuaded me to marry him. I
sometimes believe," she added, gloating over the idea like
a decayed remnant of the aristocratic spirit, "that he has
always been jealous of me because I was born a
Bolingbroke."

To Oliver, who had not like Susan grown accustomed
through constant repetition to Mrs. Treadwell's delusion,
this appeared so fresh a view of Cyrus's character, that it
caught his interest even in the midst of his own absorbing
perplexities. Until he saw Susan's head shake ominously
over her mother's shoulder, it did not occur to him that his
aunt, whom he supposed to be without imagination, had
created this consoling belief out of her own mental
vacancy.

"Oh, he wanted to worry me all right, there's no doubt
about that," he replied.

"He hasn't spoken to me when he could help it for
twenty years," pursued his aunt, who was so possessed by
the idea of her own relation to her husband that she was
incapable of dwelling upon any other.

"I wouldn't talk about it, mother, if I were you," said
Susan with resolute cheerfulness.

"I don't know why I shouldn't talk about it. It's all I've
got to talk about," returned Mrs. Treadwell peevishly; and
she added with smothered resentment, "Even my children
haven't been any comfort to me since they were little.
They've both turned against me because of the way their
father treats me. James hardly ever has so much as a word
to say to me."

"You never do the things that I want you to. You know
I'd like you to go out and enjoy yourself and have attention
as other girls do."

"You are disappointed because I'm not a belle like
Abby Goode or Jinny Pendleton," said Susan with the
patience that is born of a basic sense of humour. "But I
couldn't help that, could I?"

"Any girl in my day would have felt badly if she wasn't
admired," pursued Mrs. Treadwell with the venom of the
embittered weak, "but I don't believe you'd care a particle
if a man never looked at you twice."

"If one never looked at me once, I don't see why you
should want me to be miserable about it," was Susan's
smiling rejoinder; "and if the girls in your day couldn't be
happy without admiration, they must have been silly
creatures. I've a life of my own to live, and I'm not going to
let my happiness depend on how many times a man looks
at me." In the clear light of her ridicule, the spectre of
spinsterhood, which was still an object of dread in the
Dinwiddie of the eighties, dissolved into a shadow.

"Well, we've about finished, I believe," remarked Oliver,
closing the case over which he was stooping, and devoutly
thanking whatever beneficent Powers had not created him
a woman. "I'll send for these sometime to-morrow, Aunt
Belinda."

"You'd just as well spend the night," urged Mrs.
Treadwell stubbornly. "He need never know of it."

"But I'd know of it - that's the great thing - and I'd
never forget it."

Rising unsteadily from the box, she stood with the ends
of her purple shawl clutched tightly over her

"You'd never find it," she answered mysteriously, and
hurried out while he held the door open to light her down
the dark staircase.

When her tread was heard at last on the landing below,
Susan glanced at the books that were still left on the
shelves. "I'll pack the rest for you tomorrow, Oliver, and
your clothes, too. Have you any money?"

"A little left from selling my watch in New York. My
clothes don't amount to much. I've got them all in that bag,
but I'll leave my books in your charge until I can find a
place for them."

"I'll take good care of them. O Oliver!" her face grew
disturbed. "I forgot all about my promise to Virginia that
I'd bring you to see her to-night."

"Well, I've no time to meet girls now, of course, but that
doesn't mean that I'm not awfully knocked up about it."

"I hate so to disappoint her."

"She won't think of it twice, the beauty!"

"But she will. I'm sure she will. Hush! Mother is
coming."

As he turned to the door, it opened slowly to admit the
figure of his aunt, who was panting heavily from her
hurried ascent of the stairs. Her ill-humour toward Susan
had entirely disappeared, for the only resentment she had
ever harboured for more than a few minutes was the
lifelong one which she had borne her husband.

"It was not in the place where I had put it, so I
thought one of the servants had taken it," she explained.
"Mandy was alone in my room to-day while I was at
dinner."

In her hand she held a small pasteboard box bearing a
jeweller's imprint, and opening this, she took out a roll of
money and counted out fifty dollars on the top of a
packing-case. "I've saved this up for six months," she said.
"It came from selling some silver forks that belonged to
the Bolingbrokes, and I always felt easier to think that I
had a little laid away that he had nothing to do with. From
the very day that I married him, he was always close about
money," she added.

The sordid tragedy - not of poverty, but of
meanness - was in the gesture with which she gathered up
the notes and pressed them into his shrinking hands. And
yet Cyrus Treadwell was a rich man - the richest man
living in Dinwiddie! Oliver understood now why she was
crushed - why she had become the hopeless victim of
the little troubles of life. "From the very day of our
marriage, he was always close about money."

"I had three dozen forks and spoons in the beginning,"
she resumed as if there were no piercing significance in the
fact she stated so simply, "but I've sold them all now, one
or two at a time, when I needed a little money of my own.
He has always paid the bills, but he never gave me a cent
in my life to do as I pleased with."

with it," she persisted almost passionately, "and I'd rather
give it to you than buy anything in the world." Something in
her face - the look of one who has risen to a generous
impulse and finds happiness in the sacrifice - checked the
hand with which he was thrusting the money away from
him. He was deeply touched by her act; it was useless for
him to pretend either to her or to himself that she had not
touched him. The youth in him, unfettered, strong,
triumphant, pitied her because she was no longer young;
the artist in him pitied her because she was no longer
beautiful. Without these two things, or at least one of these
two, what was life worth to a woman?"

"I'll take it on condition that you'll let me pay it back as
soon as I get out of debt to Uncle Cyrus," he said in
obedience to Susan's imploring nod.

To this she agreed after an ineffectual protest. "You
needn't think about paying it back to me," she insisted; "I
haven't anything to spend money on now, so it doesn't
make much difference whether I have any or not. I can
help you a little more after a while," she finished with
enthusiasm. "I'm raising a few squabs out in the back yard,
and Meadows is going to buy them as soon as they are big
enough to eat."

An embarrassment out of all proportion to the act which
produced it held him speechless while he gazed at her. He
felt at first merely a sense of physical revolt from the
brutality of her self-revelation - from the nakedness to
which she had stripped the horror of her marriage under
the eyes of her daughter. Nothing, not even the natural
impulse to screen one's

soul from the gaze of the people with whom one lived, had
prevented the appalling indignity of this exposure. The
delusion that it is possible for a woman by mere virtue of
being a woman to suffer in sweetness and silence,
evaporated as he looked at her. He had believed her to be
a nonentity, and she was revealing an inner life as intense,
as real, as acutely personal as his own. A few words of
casual kindness and he had made a slave of her. He
regretted it. He was embarrassed. He was sorry. He
wished to heaven she hadn't brought him the money - and
yet in spite of his regret and his embarrassment, he was
profoundly moved. It occurred to him as he took it from
her how easy it would have been for Cyrus to have
subjugated and satisfied her in the beginning. All it needed
was a little kindness, the cheapest virtue, and the tragedy of
her ruined soul might have been averted. To make
allowances! Ah, that was the philosophy of human relations
in a word! If men and women would only stop judging
each other and make allowances!

"Well, I shan't starve just yet, thanks to you, Aunt
Belinda," he said cheerfully enough as he thrust the notes
into his pocket. It was a small thing, after all, to make her
happy by the sacrifice of his pride. Pride was not, he
remembered, included among the Christian virtues, and,
besides, as he told himself the next instant, trifling as the
sum was, it would at least tide him over financially until he
received the next payment for his reviewing. "I'd better go,
it's getting late," he said with a return of his old gaiety,
while he bent over to kiss her. He was half ashamed of
the kiss - not because he was self-conscious about

kissing, since he had long since lost that mark of
provincialism - but because of the look of passionate
gratitude which glowed in her face. Gratitude always made
him uncomfortable. It was one of the things he was forever
evading and yet forever receiving. He hated it, he had
never in his life done anything to deserve it, but he could
never escape it.

"Good-bye, Susan." His lips touched hers, and though
he was moving only a few streets away, the caress
contained all the solemnity of a last parting. Words
wouldn't come when he searched for them, and the bracing
sense of power he had felt half an hour ago was curiously
mingled now with an enervating tenderness. He was still
confident of himself, but he became suddenly conscious
that these women were necessary to his happiness and his
success, that his nature demanded the constant daily tonic
of their love and service. He understood now the primal
necessity of woman, not as an individual, but as
an incentive and an appendage to the dominant personality
of man.

"Send for me if you need me," said Susan, resting her
loving eyes upon him; "and, Oliver, please promise me to
be very careful about money."

"I'll be careful, never fear!" he replied with a laugh, as he
took up his bag and opened the door. A few minutes later,
when he was leaving the house, he reflected that the fifty
dollars in his pocket would keep life in him for a
considerable time in Dinwiddie.

CHAPTER VI
A TREADWELL IN REVOLT
YORK STREET, in which Mrs. Peachey lived and
supplied the necessaries of life to a dozen boarders, ran like
a frayed seam of gentility between the prosperous and the
impoverished quarters of Dinwiddie; and in order to reach
it, Oliver was obliged to pass the rectory, where, though he
did not see her, Virginia sat in stiffly starched muslin on the
old horsehair sofa. The fragrance of honeysuckle floated to
his nostrils from the dim garden, but so absorbed was he in
the engrossing problems of the moment, that only after he
had passed the tower of the church did he remember that
the house behind him sheltered the girl who reminded him
of one of the adorable young virgins of Perugino. For an
instant he permitted himself to dwell longingly on the
expression of gentle goodness that looked from her face;
but this memory proved so disturbing, that he put it
obdurately away from him while he returned to the prudent
consideration of the fifty dollars in his pocket. The appeal
of first love had been almost as urgent to him as to Virginia;
but the emotion which had visited both alike had affected
each differently, and this difference was due to the
fundamental distinction between woman, for whom love is
the supreme preoccupation of being, and man, to whom it is
Page 117

at best a partial manifestation of energy. To the woman
nothing else really mattered; to the man at least a dozen
other pursuits mattered very nearly as much.

The sultriness of the weather dampened his body, but not
his spirits, and as he walked on, carrying his heavy bag,
along York Street, his consciousness of the tremendous
importance to the world of his decision exhilarated him like
a tonic. He had freed himself from Cyrus and from
commercialism at a single blow, and it had all been as easy
as talking! The joke about starvation he had of course
indulged in merely for the exquisite pleasure of arousing
Susan. He wasn't going to starve; nobody was going to
starve in Dinwiddie on thirty dollars a month, and there
was no doubt in the world of his ability to make that much
by his reviewing. It was all simple enough. What he
intended to do was to write the national drama and to
practice economy.

He had, indeed, provided for everything in his future, he
was to discover a little later, except for the affable
condescension of Mrs. Peachey toward the profession of
letters. Cyrus's antagonism he had attributed to the crass
stupidity of the commercial mind; but it was a blow to him
to encounter the same misconception, more discreetly
veiled, in a woman of the charm and the character of Mrs.
Peachey. Bland, plump, and pretty, she received the
modest avowal of his occupation with the smiling
skepticism peculiar to a race whose genius has been
chiefly military.

"I understand - it is very interesting," she observed
sweetly. "But what do you do besides - what do you
do, I mean, for a living?"

incomprehensible provincialism! And the terrible part of it
was that he had suddenly the sensation of being
overwhelmed by the weight of it, of being smothered under
a mountain of prejudice. The flame of his anger against
Cyrus went out abruptly, leaving him cold. It was the
world now against which he rebelled. He felt that the whole
world was provincial.

"I shall write reviews for a New York paper," he
answered, trying in vain to impress her by a touch of
literary hauteur. At the moment it seemed to him that he
could cheerfully bear anything if they would only at least
pretend to take him seriously. What appalled him was not
the opposition, but the utter absence of comprehension.
And he could never hope to convince them! Even if he
were to write great plays, they would still hold as
obstinately by their assumption that the writing of plays did
not matter - that what really mattered was to create and
then to satisfy an inordinate appetite for tobacco. This was
authentic success, and by no illegitimate triumph of genius
could he persuade an industrial country that he was as
great a man as his uncle. The smiling incredulity in Mrs.
Peachey's face ceased to be individual and became a part
of the American attitude toward the native-born artist. This
attitude, he admitted, was not confined to Dinwiddie, since
it was national. He had encountered it in New York, but
never had the destructive force of it impressed him as it did
on the ripe and charming lips of the woman before him. In
that illuminating instant he understood why the American
consciousness in literature was still unawakened, why the
creative artist turned manufacturer, why the original

Her eyes - beautiful as the eyes of all happy women are
beautiful - dwelt on him kindly while he struggled to explain
his mission. All the dread of the unusual, all the inherited
belief in the sanctity of fixed opinions, all the passionate
distrust of ideas that have not stood the test of
centuries - these things which make for the safety and the
permanence of the racial life, were in the look of motherly
indulgence with which she regarded him. She had just risen
from a rocking-chair on the long porch, where honest Tom
sat relating ponderous war anecdotes to an attentive group
of boarders; and beyond her in the dimly lighted hall he
could see the wide old staircase climbing leisurely into the
mysterious silence of the upper storeys.

"I have a small room at the back that I might rent to
you," she said hesitatingly after a pause. "I am afraid you
will find it warm in summer, as it is just under the roof and
has a western exposure, but I hardly think I could do
better for you at the price you are able to pay. I
understood that you intended to live with your uncle," she
added in a burst of enthusiasm. "My husband has always
been one of his greatest admirers."

The mention of Cyrus was like a spur to Oliver's
ambition, and he realized with gratitude that it was merely
his sensibility, not his resolution, which had been shaken.

"I'll take the room," he returned, ignoring what she had
said as well as what she had implied about Cyrus. Then
as she tripped ahead of him, he entered

the dismantled hall, filled with broken pieces of fine old
furniture, and ascended the stairs as far as the third storey.
When she turned a loosened doorknob and passed before
him into the little room at the back, he saw first of all the
narrow window, with its torn green shade, beyond which
clustered a blur of silvery foliage in the midst of red roofs
and huddled chimneys. From this hilltop, he could look
down unseen on that bit of the universal life which was
Dinwiddie. He could watch the town at work and at play;
he could see those twenty-one thousand souls either moved
as a unit by the secret forces which ignore individuality, or
separated and enclosed by that impenetrable wall of
personality which surrounded each atom among them. He
could follow the divisions of class and the still deeper
divisions of race as they were symbolized in the old brick
walls, overgrown with young grasses, which girdled the
ancient gardens in High Street. From the dazzling glimpses
of white muslin under honeysuckle arbours, to the dusky
forms that swarmed like spawn in the alleys, the life of
Dinwiddie loved, hated, enjoyed, and suffered beneath
him. And over this love and this hatred, this enjoyment and
this suffering, there presided - an outward and visible sign
of the triumph of industrialism - the imposing brick walls of
the new Treadwell tobacco factory.

A soft voice spoke in his ear, and turning, he looked
into the face of Mrs. Peachey, whom he had almost
forgotten.

"You will find the sun warm in the afternoon, I am
afraid," she murmured, still with her manner of pleasantly
humouring him which he found later

to be an unconscious expression of her half maternal,
wholly feminine attitude toward his sex.

"Oh, I daresay it will be all right," he responded. "I shall
work so hard that I shan't have time to bother about the
weather."

Leaving the window, he gazed around the little room with
an impulse of curiosity. Who had lived here before him? A
clerk? A travelling salesman? Perhaps one of the numerous
indigent gentlewomen that formed so large and so important
a part of the population of Dinwiddie? The walls were
smeared with a sickly blue wash, and in several places
there were the marks left from the pictures of the preceding
lodger. An old mahogany bureau, black with age and ill
usage, stood crosswise in the corner behind the door, and
reflected in the dim mirror he saw his own face looking
back at him. A film of dust lay over everything in the room,
over the muddy blue of the walls, over the strip of
discoloured matting on the door, over the few fine old
pieces of furniture, fallen now into abject degradation. The
handsome French bed, placed conveniently between door
and window, stood naked to the eyes, with its cheap husk
mattress rolled half back, and its bare slats, of which the
two middle ones were tied together with rope, revealing
conspicuously its descent from elegance into squalor. As he
saw it, the room was the epitome of tragedy, yet in the
centre of it, on one of the battered and broken-legged
Heppelwhite chairs, sat Mrs. Peachey, rosy, plump, and
pretty, regarding him with her slightly quizzical smile. "Yes,
life, of course, is sad if you stop to think about it," her smile
seemed to assure him;

"Do you wish to stay here to-night?" she asked, seeing
that he had put down his bag.

"If you will let me. But I am afraid it will be
inconvenient."

She shook her head. "Not if you don't mind the dust.
The room has been shut up for weeks, and the dust is so
dreadful in the spring. The servants have gone out," she
added, "but I'll bring you some sheets for your bed, and
you can fill your pitcher from the spout at the end of the
hall. Only be careful not to stumble over the step there. It
is hard to see when the gas is not lit."

"You won't object to my putting shelves around the
walls?" he asked, while she pushed the mattress into
place with the light and condescending touch of one who
preserves the aristocratic manner not only in tragedy, but
even in toil. It was, indeed, her peculiar distinction, he
came to know afterward, that she worked as gracefully as
other women played.

"Couldn't you find room enough without them?" she
inquired while her gaze left the mattress and travelled
dubiously to the mantelpiece. "It seems a pity for you to go
to any expense about shelves, doesn't it?"

"Oh, they won't cost much. I'll do the work myself, and
I'll do it in the mornings when it won't disturb anybody. I
daresay I'll have to push that bed around a bit in order to
make space."

Something in his vibrant voice - so full of the richness
and the buoyant energy of youth - made her look at him
as she might have looked at one of

her children, or at that overgrown child whom she had
married. And just as she had managed Tom all his life by
pretending to let him have his way, so she proceeded now
by instinct to manage Oliver. "You dear boy! Of course
you may turn things upside down if you want to. Only wait
a few days until you are settled and have seen how you like
it."

Then she tripped out with her springy step, which had
kept its elasticity through war and famine, while Oliver,
gazing after her, wondered whether it was philosophy or
merely a love of pleasure that sustained her? Was it
thought or the absence of thought that produced her
wonderful courage?

He heard her tread on the stairs; then the sound passed
to the front hall; and a minute later there coated up the
laughter with which the assembled boarders received her.
Closing the door, which she had left open, he turned back
to the window and stared from his hilltop down on the red
roofs of Dinwiddie. White as milk, the moonlight lay on
the brick wall at the foot of the garden, and down the
gradual hill rows of chimneys were outlined against the
faintly dappled sky in the west. In the next yard a hollow
tree looked as if it were cut out of silver, and beneath its
boughs, which drooped into the alley, he could see the
huddled figure of an aged negress who had fallen asleep on
a flagstone. So still was the night that the very smoke
appeared to hang suspended above the tops of the
chimneys, as though it were too heavy to rise and yet too
light to float downward toward the motionless trees. Under
the pale beams the town lost its look of solidity and grew
spectral. Nothing seemed to hold it to the

earth except the stillness which held the fallen flowers of
the syringa there also. Even the church towers showed like
spires of thistledown, and the winding streets, which ran
beside clear walls and dark shining gardens, trailed off
from the ground into the silvery air. Only the black bulk of
the Treadwell factory beside the river defied the magic of
the moon's rays and remained a solid reminder of the
brevity of all enchantment.

Gradually, while Oliver waited for Mrs. Peachey's
return, he ceased to think of the furniture in his room; he
ceased to think even of the way in which he should manage
to do his work, and allowed his mind to dwell, almost with
a feeling of ecstasy, on the memory of Virginia. He saw the
mist of little curls on her temples, her blue eyes, with their
good and gentle expression, and the look of radiant
happiness which played like light over her features. The
beauty of the night acted as a spur to his senses. He
wanted companionship. He wanted the smile and the touch
of a woman. He wanted to fall in love with a girl who had
blue eyes and a mouth like a flower!

"It wouldn't take me ten minutes to become a fool about
her," he thought. "Confound this moonlight, anyhow. It's
making an idiot of me."

Like many persons of artistic sensibility, he had at times
the feeling that his imagination controlled his conduct, and
under the sharp pressure of it now, he began to picture
what the end would be if he were to fling himself headlong
in the direction where his desires were leading him. If he
could only let himself go! If he could only defy the future! If
he could only forget in a single crisis that he was a Treadwell!

"If I were the right sort, I suppose I'd rush in and make
her fall in love with me, and then marry her and let her
starve," he thought. "But somehow I can't. I'm either not
enough of a genius or not enough of a Treadwell. When it
comes to starving a woman in cold blood, my conscience
begins to balk. There's only one thing it would balk at more
violently, and that is starving my work. That's what Uncle
Cyrus would like - nothing better. By Jove! the way he
looked when he had the nerve to make that proposition!
And I honestly believe he thought I was going to agree to
it. I honestly believe he was surprised when I stood out
against him. He's a downright idiot, that's what is the matter
with him. Why, it would be a crime, nothing less than a
crime, for me to give up and go hunting after freight orders.
Any ninny can do that. James can do that - but he couldn't
see, he positively couldn't see that I'd be wasted at it."

The vision of Cyrus had banished the vision of Virginia,
and leaving the window, Oliver began walking rapidly
back and forth between the washstand and the bare
bedstead. The fire of his ambition, which opposition had
fanned into a blaze, had never burned more brightly in his
heart than it did at that instant. He felt capable not only of
renouncing Virginia, but of reforming the world. While he
walked there, he dedicated himself to art as exclusively as
Cyrus had ever dedicated himself to money - since
Nature, who had made the individual, had been powerless
to eradicate this basic quality of the type. A Treadwell had
always stood for success, and success meant merely
seeing but one thing at a time and seeing that

thing at every instant. It meant to Cyrus and to James the
thought of money as absolutely as it meant to Oliver the
thought of art. The way to it was the same, only the ideas
that pointed the way were different. To Cyrus and to
James, indeed, as to all Treadwells everywhere, the idea
was hardly an idea at all, since it had been crystallized by
long usage into a fact. The word "success" (and what was
success except another name for the universal Treadwell
spirit?) invariably assumed the image of the dollar in the
mind of Cyrus, while to Oliver, since his thinking was less
carefully coördinated, it was without shape or symbol.
Pacing the dusty floor, with the pale moonlight brooding
like a flock of white birds over the garden, the young man
would have defined the word as embracing all the lofty
aspirations in the human soul. It was the hour when youth
scaled the heights and wrested the divine fire from the
heavens. At the moment he was less an individual than the
embodied age of two-and-twenty. He was intellect in
adolescence - intellect finding its strength - intellect
in revolt against the tyranny of industrialism.

The staircase creaked softly, and following a knock at
the door, Mrs. Peachey entered with her arms full of
bedclothes.

"I am so sorry I kept you waiting, Mr. Treadwell, but I
was obliged to stop to speak to a caller. Oh, thank you.
Do you really know how to make up a bed? How very
clever of you! I'm sure Mr. Peachey couldn't do such a
thing if his life depended upon it. Men are so helpless that it
surprises me - it really does - when they know how to do
anything. Oh, of course, you have lived about the world
so much that

you have had to learn how to manage. And you've been
abroad? How very interesting! Some day when I have the
time you must tell me about it. Not that I should ever care
to go myself, but I love to hear other people talk about
their travels. Professor Trimble - he lived over there a
great many years - gave a talk before the Ladies' Aid
Society of our church, and everybody said it was quite as
instructive as going one's self. And then, too, one escaped
all the misery of seasickness."

All the time she was busily spreading his bed, while he
assisted her with what she described to her husband
afterward as "the most charming manner, just as if he
enjoyed it." This charming manner, which was the outward
expression of an inborn kindliness, won her entirely to his
side before the bed-making was over. That any one so
frank and pleasant, with such nice boyish eyes, and so rich
a colour, should prove untrustworthy, was unbelievable to
that part of her which ruled her judgment. And since this
ruling part was not reason, but instinct, she possessed,
perhaps, as infallible a guide to opinions as ever falls to the
lot of erring humanity. "I know he's all right. Don't ask me
how I know it, Mr. Peachey," she observed while she
brushed her hair for the night; "I don't know how I know it,
but I do know it."

Oliver, meanwhile, had thrown off his coat, and settled
down to work under the flickering gas, at the end of the
mantelpiece. Inspiration had seized him while he helped
Mrs. Peachey make his bed, and his "charming manner,"
which had at first been natural enough, had become at last
something of an effort.

He was writing the second act of a play in which he meant
to supplant the pretty shams of the stage by the aspect of
sober reality. The play dealt with woman - with the new
woman who has grown so old in the last twenty
years - with the woman whose past is a cross upon which
she crucifies both herself and the public. Like most men of
twenty-two, he was convinced that he understood all about
women, and like most men of any age, he was under the
impression that women acted, thought, and felt, not as
individuals, but as a sex. The classic phrases, "women are
like that," and "women think so queerly about things," were
on his lips as constantly as if he were an average male and
not an earnest-minded student of human nature. But while
the average male applies general principles loosely and
almost unconsciously, with Oliver the habit was the result of
a distinctly formulated philosophy. He had, as he would
probably have put it, a feeling for reality, and the stage
appeared to him, on the whole, to be the most effective
vehicle for revealing the universe to itself. If he was not a
genius, he possessed the unconquerable individualism of
genius; and he possessed, also, a cleverness which could
assume the manner of genius without apparent effort. His
ability, which no one but Cyrus had ever questioned, may
not have been of the highest order, but at least it was better
stuff than had ever gone into the making of American plays.
In the early eighties profound darkness still hung over the
stage, for the intellect of a democracy, which first seeks an
outlet in statesmanship, secondly in commerce, and lastly in
art and literature, had hardly begun to express itself, with
the immaturity of youth, in several of

these latter fields. It was Oliver's distinction as well as his
misfortune that he lived before his country was ready for
him. Coming a quarter of a century later, he might have
made a part of a national emancipation of intellect. Coming
when he did, he stood merely for one of the spasmodic
reactions against the dominant spirit. Unwritten history is
full of such reactions, since it is by the accumulated energy
of their revolts that the world moves on its way.

But at the age of twenty-two, though he was assured that
he understood both woman and the universe in which she
belonged, he was pathetically ignorant of his own place in
the extravagance of Nature. With the rest of us, he would
have been astounded at the suggestion that he might have
been born to be wasted. Other things were wasted, he
knew, since those who called Nature an economist had
grossly flattered her. Types and races and revolutions were
squandered with royal prodigality - but that he himself
should be so was clearly unthinkable. Deep down in him
there was the obstinate belief that his existence was a vital
matter to the awful Power that ruled the universe; and while
he worked that May evening at the second act of his great
play, with the sweat raining from his brow in the sweltering
heat, it was as impossible for him to conceive of ultimate
failure as it was for him to realize that he should ever cease
to exist. The air was stagnant, the light was bad, his stomach
was empty, and he was tormented by the stinging of the
gnats that circled around the flame - but he was gloriously
happy with the happiness of a man who has given himself to
an idea.

CHAPTER VII
THE ARTIST IN PHILISTIA
AT DAWN, after a
sleepless night, Oliver dressed
himself and made a cup of coffee on the spirit lamp he
carried in his bag. While he drank, a sense of power
passed over him like warmth. He was cheered, he was
even exhilarated. A single cup of this miraculous fluid, and
his depression was vanquished as no argument could have
vanquished it. Without sermonizing, without logic even, the
demon of pessimism, which has its home in an empty
stomach, was expelled into spiritual darkness. He
remembered that he had eaten nothing for almost twenty-four
hours (having missed yesterday's dinner), and this
thought carried him downstairs, where he begged a roll
from a yarning negro cook in the kitchen. Coming up to his
room again, he poured out a second cup of coffee, added a
dash of cream, which he had brought with him in a
handleless pitcher, and leaning comfortably back in the
worn horsehair covered chair by the window, relapsed into
a positive orgy of enjoyment. His whole attitude toward the
universe had been altered by a bubbling potful of brown
liquid, and the tremendous result - so grotesquely out of
proportion to its cause - appeared to him at the minute
entirely right and proper. Everything was entirely right and
proper, and he felt able to approve
Page 131

with a clear conscience the Divine arrangement of
existence.

Outside, the sunrise, which he could not see, was
flooding the roofs of Dinwiddie with a dull golden light. The
heat had given way before the soft wind which smelt of
flowers, and scattered tiny shreds of mist, like white
rose-leaves, over the moist gardens. The look of unreality, which
had been a fiction of the moonlight, faded gradually as the
day broke, and left the harsh outlines and the blackened
chimneys of the town unsoftened by any shadow of illusion.
Presently, as the sunlight fell aslant the winding streets, there
was a faint stir in the house; but since the day was Sunday,
and Dinwiddie observed the Sabbath by sleeping late, this
stir was slow and drowsy, like the movement of people but
half awake. First, a dilapidated milk wagon rumbled through
the alleys to the back gates, where dishevelled negro maids
ran out with earthenware pitchers, which went back foaming
around the brims. Then the doors of the houses opened
slowly; the green outside shutters were flung wide; and an
army of coloured servants bearing brooms, appeared on the
porches, and made expressive gestures to one another over
the railings. Occasionally, when one lifted a doormat in order
to beat the dust out of it, she would forget to put it down
again while she stared after the milk cart. Nobody - not
even the servants - seemed to regard the wasted hours as
of any importance. It struck Oliver that the only use
Dinwiddie made of time was to kill it.

He fell to work with enthusiasm, and he was still
working when the reverberations of the breakfast

bell thundered in his ears. Going downstairs to the
dining-room, he found several thin and pinched looking young
women, with their hats on and Sunday-school lessons
beside their plates. Mrs. Peachey, still smiling her quizzical
smile, sat at the head of the table, pouring coffee out of an
old silver coffee-pot, which was battered in on one side as
if it had seen active service in the war. When, after a few
hurried mouthfuls, he asked permission to return to his
work, she received his excuses with the same cheerful
acquiescence with which she accepted the decrees of
Providence. It is doubtful, indeed, if her serenity, which was
rooted in an heroic hopelessness, could have been shaken
either by the apologies of a boarder or by the appearance
of an earthquake. Her happiness was of that invulnerable
sort which builds its nest not in the luxuriant gardens of the
emotions, but in the bare, rock-bound places of the spirit.
Courage, humour, an adherence to conviction which is
wedded to an utter inability to respect any opinion except
one's own; loyalty which had sprung from a principle into a
passion; a fortifying trust, less in the Power that rules the
universe than in the peculiar virtues of the Episcopal prayer-book
when bound in black; a capacity for self-sacrifice
which had made the South a nation of political martyrs;
complacency, exaltation, narrowness of vision, and
uncompromising devotion to an ideal - these were the
qualities which had passed from the race into the individual
and through the individual again back into the very blood
and the fibre of the race.

"Do you work on Sunday?" she inquired sweetly, yet
with the faintest tinge of disapproval in her tone.

"Saint James' Church is only a few minutes' walk from
here; but I suppose you are a Presbyterian, like your
uncle?"

His respectability he saw hung in the balance - for to
have avowed himself a freethinker would have dyed him
socially only one shade less black than to have declared
himself a Republican - so, escaping without a further
confession of faith, he ascended to his room and applied
himself anew to the regeneration of the American drama.
The dull gold light, which slept on the brick walls, began
presently to slant in long beams over the roofs, which
mounted like steps up the hillside, while as the morning
advanced, the mellow sound of chimes floated out on the
stillness, calling Dinwiddians to worship, as it had called
their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers before
them. The Sabbath calm, so heavy that an axe could hardly
have dispelled it, filled the curving streets and the square
gardens like an invisible fog - a fog that dulled the brain and
weighed down the eyelids and made the grim walls of the
Treadwell tobacco factory look as if they were rising out of
a dream. Into this dream, under the thick boughs of
mulberry trees, there passed presently a thin file of people,
walking alone or in pairs. The men were mostly old; but the
women were of every age, and all except the very young
were clad in mourning and wore hanging veils on their
bonnets. Though Oliver did not know it, he was, in reality,
watching a procession of those who, having once embraced
a cause and lost it, were content to go on quietly in a hush of
memory for the rest of life. Passion had once inflamed them,
but they moved now in

the inviolable peace which comes only to those who have
nothing left that they may lose. At the end of the line, in the
middle of the earthen roadbed walked an old horse, with
an earnest face and a dump cart hitched to him, and in the
cart were the boxes of books which Susan had helped
Oliver to pack the evening before. "Who'd have thought
she'd get them here so soon?" he said to himself. "By
George, she is a wonder! And Sunday too!"

The old horse, having reached the hilltop, disappeared
behind the next house, and ten minutes later Mrs. Peachey
escorted the smallest of his boxes into his bedroom.

"Your cousin is downstairs, but I didn't know whether
you wanted me to bring her up here or not?" she said.

"Of course you do, don't you, Oliver?" asked Susan's
voice, and entering the room, she coolly presented her
cheek to him. This coolness, which impressed him almost
as much as her extraordinary capability, made him feel
sometimes as if she had built a stone wall between them.
Years afterwards he asked himself if this was why his
admiration for her had never warmed into love?

"Well, you're a good one!" he exclaimed, as she drew
back from the casual embrace.

"I knew you were here," she answered, "because John
Henry Pendleton" (was it his imagination or did the faintest
blush tinge her face?) "saw Major Peachey last night and
told me on his way home."

be late if I don't hurry." She wore a grey cashmere dress,
made with a draped polonaise which accentuated her
rather full hips, and a hat with a steeple crown that did not
suit the Treadwell arch of her nose. He thought she looked
plain, but he did not realize that in another dress and hat
she might have been almost beautiful - that she was,
indeed, one of those large-minded, passionately honest
women who, in their scorn of presence or affectation,
rarely condescend to make the best of their appearances.
To have consciously selected a becoming hat would have
seemed to her a species of coquetry, and coquetry, even
the most innocent, she held in abhorrence. Her sincerity
was not only intellectual; it was of that rarer sort which has
its root in a physical instinct.

After she had gone, he worked steadily for a couple of
hours, and then opened one of the boxes Susan had
brought and arranged a few of his books in a row on the
mantelpiece. It was while he stood still undecided whether
to place "The Origin of Species" or "The Critique of Pure
Reason" on the end nearest his bed, that a knock came at
his door, and the figure of Miss Priscilla Batte, attired in a
black silk dolman with bugle trimmings, stood revealed on
the threshold.

"Sally Peachey just told me that you were here," she
said, enfolding him in the embrace which seemed common
to Dinwiddie, "so I thought I would speak to you on my
way back from church. I don't suppose you've ever heard
of me, but I am your cousin Priscilla Batte."

Though he was entirely unaware of it, the moment was a
momentous one in his experience. The visit of Miss
Priscilla may have appeared an insignificant

matter to those who have not learned that the insignificant is
merely the significant seen from another angle - but the
truth was that it marked a decisive milestone in his
emotional history. Even Mrs. Peachey, who had walked
back from church with her, and who harboured the
common delusion that Life selects only slim bodies for its
secret agents, did not dream as she watched that enormous
figure toil up the staircase that she was gazing upon the
movement of destiny. Had Oliver been questioned as to the
dominant influence in shaping his career, he would probably
have answered blindly, but sincerely, "The Critique of Pure
Reason" - so far was he from suspecting that his
philosophy had less control over his future than had the
accident that his mother was the third cousin of Priscilla
Batte.

He pushed a chair into the widest space he could find,
and she seated herself as modestly as if she were not the
vehicle of the invisible Powers. The stiff grosgrain strings of
her bonnet stood out like small wings under her double
chin, and on her massive bosom he saw the cameo brooch
bearing the war-like profile of Athene. As she sat there,
beaming complacently upon him, with her prayer-book and
hymnal held at a decent angle in front of her, she seemed to
Oliver to dominate the situation simply by the solid weight
of her physical presence. In her single person she managed
to produce the effect of a majority. As a mere mass of
humanity she carried conviction.

"I was sorry not to see you at church," she said, "but I
suppose you went with Cyrus." As he shook his head
silently, she added hastily, "I hope there's nothing wrong
between you and him."

"Nothing except that I have decided not to go into the
tobacco business."

"But what in the world are you going to do? How are
you going to live if he doesn't provide for you?"

"Oh, I'll manage somehow. You needn't worry, Cousin
Priscilla." He smiled at her across the unfinished page of his
play, and this smile won her as it had won Mrs. Peachey.
Like most spinsters she had remained a creature of
sentiment, and the appeal of the young and masculine she
found difficult to resist. After all he was a charming boy,
her heart told her. What he needed was merely some good
girl to take care of him and convert him to the Episcopal
Church. And immediately, as is the way with women, she
became as anxious to sacrifice Virginia to this possible
redemption of the male as she had been alarmed by the
suspicion that such a desire existed in Susan. Though it
would have shocked her to hear that she held any opinion
in common with Mohammed (who appeared in the
universal history she taught only in a brief list of "false
prophets"), there existed deep down in her the feeling that
a man's soul was of greater consequence than a woman's in
the eyes of God.

"I hope you haven't been foolish, Oliver," she said in a
tone which conveyed an emotional sympathy as well as a
moral protest.

"That depends upon what you mean by foolishness," he
returned, still smiling.

"Well, I don't think you ought to quarrel with Cyrus. He
may not be perfect. I am not saying that he mightn't have
been a better husband, for instance - though I always
hold the woman to blame when a

marriage turns out a failure - but when all's said and
done, he is a great man, Oliver."

He shook his head impatiently. "I've heard that until I'm
sick of it - forgive me, Cousin Priscilla."

"Everybody admires him - that is, everybody except
Belinda."

"I should say she'd had excellent opportunities for
forming an opinion. What's he ever done, anyhow, that's
great," he asked almost angrily, "except accumulate
money? It seems to me that you've gone mad over money
in Dinwiddie. I suppose it's the reaction from having to do
without it so long."

Miss Priscilla, whose native serenity drew strength from
another's loss of temper, beamed into his flushed face as if
she enjoyed the spectacle of his heightened colour.

"You oughtn't to talk like that, Oliver," she said. "How
on earth are you going to fall in love and marry, if you
haven't any money to keep a wife? What you need is a
good girl to look after you. I never married, myself, but I
am sometimes tempted to believe that even an unhappy
marriage is better than none at all. At least it gives you
something to think about."

"I have enough to think about already. I have my
work."

"But work isn't a wife."

"I know it isn't, but I happen to like it better."

Her matchmaking instinct had received a check, but the
placid determination which was the basis of her character
was merely reinforced thereby to further efforts. It was for
his good to marry (had not her mother and her
grandmother instilled into her the doctrine that an early
marriage was the single masculine safeguard,

since, once married, a man's morality became not his
own business, but his wife's), and marry him she was
resolved to do, either with his cheerful cooperation or, if
necessary, without it. He had certainly looked at Virginia
as if he admired her, and surely a girl like that - lovely,
loving, unselfish to a fault, and trained from her infancy to
excel in all the feminine virtues - surely, this perfect flower
of sex specialization could have been designed by
Providence only for the delight and the sanctification of
man.

"Then, if that is the way your mind is made up I hope
you will be careful not to trifle with the feelings of a girl like
Jinny Pendleton," she retorted severely.

By a single stroke of genius, inspired by the diplomacy
inherent in a sex whose chief concern has been the making
of matches, she transfixed his imagination as skilfully as she
might have impaled a butterfly on a bodkin. While he
stared at her she could almost see the iridescent wings of
his fancy whirling madly around the idea by which she had
arrested their flight. Trifle with Virginia! Trifle with that
radiant vision of girlhood! All the chivalry of youth revolted
from the suggestion, and he thought again of the wistful
adoration in the eyes of a Perugino virgin. Was it possible
that she could ever look at him with that angelic
expression of weakness and surrender? The fire of first
love, which had smouldered under the weight of his reason,
burst suddenly into flame. His thoughts, which had been as
clear as a geometrical figure, became suddenly blurred by
the mystery upon which passion lives. He was seized by a
consuming

wonder about Virginia, and this wonder was heightened
when he remembered the appealing sweetness in her face
as she smiled up at him. Did she already love him? Had he
conquered by a look the exquisite modesty of her soul?
With this thought the memory of her virginal shyness stung
his senses as if it were the challenge of sex. Chivalry, love,
vanity, curiosity - all these circled helplessly around the
invisible axis of Miss Priscilla's idea.

"What do you mean? Surely you don't suppose - she
hasn't said anything "

"You don't imagine that Jinny is the kind of girl who
would say anything, do you?" inquired Miss Priscilla.

"But there must be some reason why you should have - "

"If there is, my dear boy, I'm not going to tell it," she
answered with a calmness which he felt, in his excited
state, to be positively infernal. "All I meant was to warn
you not to trifle with any girl as innocent of life as Jinny
Pendleton is. I don't want her to get her heart broken
before she has the chance to make some man happy."

"Do you honestly mean to imply that I could break her
heart if I tried to?"

"I don't mean to imply anything. I am only telling you
that she is just the kind of girl a man would want to marry.
She is her mother all over again, and I don't believe Lucy
has ever thought of herself a minute since she married."

"She looks like an angel," he said, "but - "

"And she isn't a bit the kind of girl that Susan is, though
they are so devoted. Now, I can understand a man not
wanting to marry Susan, because

she is so full of ideas, and has a mind of her own about
things. But Jinny is different."

Then, seeing that she had "unsettled" his mind sufficiently
for her purpose, she rose and looked around the room
with the inordinate curiosity about details which kept her
still young in spite of her sixty years.

"You don't mean to tell me you brought all those books
with you, Oliver?" she asked. "Why on earth don't you get
rid of some of them?"

"I can't spare any of them. I never know which one I
may want next."

"What are those you're putting on the mantelpiece? Isn't
Darwin the name of the man who said we were all
descended from monkeys?"

As he made no answer to this except to press her hand
and thank her for coming, she left the mantelpiece and
wandered to the window, where her gaze rested, with a
look of maternal satisfaction, on the roofs of Dinwiddie.

"It's a jolly view of the town, isn't it?" he said. "There's
nothing like looking down from a hilltop to give one a
sense of superiority."

"You can see straight into Mrs. Goode's backyard," she
replied, "and I never knew before that she left her clothes
hanging on the line on Sunday. That comes, I suppose,
from not looking after her servants and gadding about on
all sorts of charities. She told me the other day that she
belonged to every charitable organization in Dinwiddie."

"Is she Abby's mother?"

"Yes, but you'd never imagine they were any relation.
Abby gave me more trouble than any girl I ever taught.
She never would learn the multiplication

table, and I don't believe to this day she knows
it. There isn't any harm in her except that she is a
scatter-brain, and will make eyes or burst. I some times
think it isn't her fault - that she was just born man-crazy."

"She's awfully good fun," he laughed.

"Are you going to her garden party on Wednesday?"

"I accepted before I quarrelled with Uncle Cyrus, but
I'll have to get out of it now."

"Oh, I wouldn't. All the pretty girls in town will be
there."

"Are there any plain ones? And what becomes of
them?"

"The Lord only knows! Old Judge Bassett used to say
that there wouldn't be any preserves and pickles in the
world if all women were born good-looking. I declare I
never realized how small the tower of Saint James' Church
is!"

For a moment he hesitated, and when he spoke his
voice had taken a deeper tone. "Will Virginia Pendleton
be at the party?" he asked.

"She wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. Miss
Willy Whitlow was sewing there yesterday on a white
organdie dress for her to wear. Have you ever seen Jinny
in white organdie? I always tell Lucy the child looks sweet
enough to eat when she puts it on."

He laughed again, but not as he had laughed at her
description of Abby. "Ask her please to put blue bows on
her flounces and a red rose in her hair," he said.

Priscilla, why didn't I inherit my soul from your side of the
family."

"Well, for my part I don't believe in all this talk about
inheritance. Nobody ever heard of inheriting anything but
money when I was a girl. You've got the kind of soul the
good Lord wanted to put into you and that's all there is
about it."

When he returned from assisting her in her panting and
difficult descent of the stairs, he sat down again before the
unfinished act of his play, but his eyes wandered from the
manuscript to the town which lay as bright and still in the
sunlight as if it were imprisoned in crystal. The wonder
aroused in his mind by Miss Priscilla's allusion to Virginia
persisted as a disturbing element in the background of his
thoughts. What had she meant? Was it possible that there
was truth in the wildest imaginings of his vanity? Virginia's
face, framed in her wreath of hair, floated beneath the
tower of Saint James' Church at which he was gazing, and
the radiant goodness in her look mounted like a draught of
strong wine to his brain. Passion, which he had discounted
in his plans for the future, appeared suddenly to shake the
very foundations of his life. Never before had the spirit and
the flesh united in the appeal of a woman to his imagination.
Never before had the divine virgin of his dreams assumed
the living red and white of young girlhood. He thought how
soft her hair must be to the touch, and how warm her
mouth would glow from his kisses. With a kind of wonder
he realized that this was first love - that it was first love he
had felt when he met her eyes under the dappled sunlight in
High Street. The

memory of her beauty was like a net which enmeshed his
thoughts when he tried to escape it. Look where he would
he saw always a cloud of dark hair and two deep blue eyes
that shone as softly as wild hyacinths after a shower. Think
as he would he met always the haunting doubt - "What did
she mean? Can it be true that she already loves me?" So
small an incident as Miss Priscilla's Sunday call had not
only upset his work for the morning, but had changed in an
instant the even course of his future. He decided suddenly
that he must see Virginia again - that he would go to Abby
Goode's party, and though the party was only three days
off, it seemed to him that the waiting would be almost
unbearable. Only after he had once seen her would it be
possible, he felt, to stop thinking of her and to return
comfortably to his work.

CHAPTER VIII
WHITE MAGIC
IN THE centre of her
bedroom, with her back turned to
that bookcase which was filled with sugared falsehoods
about life, Virginia was standing very straight while Miss
Willy Whitlow knelt at her feet and sewed pale blue bows
on her overskirt of white organdie. Occasionally, the door
opened softly, and the rector or one of the servants looked
in to see "Jinny" or "Miss Jinny dressed for the party," and
when such interruptions occurred, Mrs. Pendleton, who sat
on an ottoman at the dressmaker's right hand and held a
spool of thread and a pair of scissors in her lap, would say
sternly, "Don't move, Jinny, stand straight or Miss Willy
won't get the bows right." At these warning words,
Virginia's thin shoulders would spring back and the filmy
ruffles stir gently over her girlish breast.

Through the open window, beyond the drooping boughs
of the paulownia trees, a few wistful stars shone softly
through the web of purple twilight. The night smelt of a
thousand flowers - all the mingled sweetness of old
gardens floated in on the warm wind and caressed the
faded figure of Miss Willy as lovingly as it did the young
and radiant vision of Virginia. Once or twice the kneeling
seamstress had glanced up at the girl and thought: "I
wonder how it feels to

be as lovely as that?" Then she sighed as one who had
missed her heritage, for she had been always plain, and
went on patiently sewing the bows on Virginia's overskirt.
"You can't have everything in this world, and I ought to be
thankful that I've kept out of the poorhouse," she added a
minute later when a little stab of envy went through her at
hearing the girl laugh from sheer happiness.

"Am I all right, mother? Tell me how I look."

"Lovely, darling. There won't be any one there sweeter
than you are."

The maternal passion lit Mrs. Pendleton's eyes with
splendour, and her worn face was illuminated as if a lamp
had been held suddenly close to it. All day, in spite of a
neuralgic pain in her temples, she had worked hard
hemming the flounces for Virginia's dress, and into every
stitch had gone something of the divine ecstasy of
martyrdom. Her life centred so entirely in her affections that
apart from love she could be hardly said to exist at all. In
spite of her trials she was probably the happiest woman in
Dinwiddie, for she had found her happiness in the only way
it is ever won - by turning her back on it. Never once had
she thought of it as an end to be pursued, never even as a
flower to be plucked from the wayside. It is doubtful if she
had ever stopped once in the thirty years of her marriage to
ask herself the questions: "Is this what I want to do?" or
"Does this make me happy?" Love meant to her not
grasping, but giving, and in serving others she had served
herself unawares. Even her besetting sin of "false pride" she
indulged not on her own account, but because she, who
could be humble enough for herself, could not bear to associate

The last blue bow was attached to the left side of the
overskirt, and while Miss Willy rose from her knees,
Virginia crossed to the window and gazed up at the pale
stars over the tops of the paulownias. A joy so vibrant that
it was like living music swelled in her breast. She was
young! She was beautiful! She was to be loved! This
preternatural certainty of happiness was so complete that
the chilling disappointments of the last few days had melted
before it like frost in the sunlight. It was founded upon an
instinct so much deeper, so much more primitive than
reason, that it resisted the logic of facts with something of
the exalted obstinacy with which faith has resisted the
arguments of philosophy. Like all young and inexperienced
creatures, she was possessed by the feeling that there
exists a magnetic current of attraction between desire and
the object which it desires. "Something told" her that she
was meant for happiness, and the voice of this "something"
was more convincing than the chaotic march of
phenomena. Sorrow, decay, death - these appeared to her
as things which must happen inevitably to other people, but
from which she should be forever shielded by some
beneficent Providence. She thought of them as vaguely as
she did of the remote tragedies of history. They bore no
closer relation to her own life than did the French
Revolution or the beheading of Charles the First. It was
natural, if sad, that Miss Willy Whitlow should fade and
suffer. The world, she knew, was full of old people, of
weary people, of blighted people; but she cherished
passionately the belief

that these people were all miserable because, somehow,
they had not chosen to be happy. There appeared
something positively reprehensible in a person who could
go sighing upon so kind and beautiful a planet. All things,
even joy, seemed to her a mere matter of willing. It was
impossible that any hostile powers should withstand the
radiant energy of her desire.

Leaning there from the window, with her face lifted to
the stars, and her mother's worshipping gaze on her back,
she thought of the "happiness" which would be hers in the
future: and this "happiness" meant to her only the solitary
experience of love. Like all the women of her race, she had
played gallantly and staked her world upon a single chance.
Whereas a man might have missed love and still have
retained life, with a woman love and life were
interchangeable terms. That one emotion represented not
only her sole opportunity of joy, it constituted as well her
single field of activity. The chasm between marriage and
spinsterhood was as wide as the one between children and
pickles. Yet so secret was this intense absorption in the
thought of romance, that Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting her
own girlhood, would have been startled had she penetrated
that lovely head and discovered the ecstatic dreams that
flocked through her daughter's brain. Though love was the
one window through which a woman might look on a larger
world, she was fatuously supposed neither to think of it nor
to desire it until it had offered itself unsolicited. Every girl
born into the world was destined for a heritage of love or
of barrenness - yet she was forbidden to exert herself
either to invite the one or to avoid the other. For, in spite of
the fiery splendour of Southern womanhood

during the war years, to be feminine, in the eyes of
the period, was to be morally passive.

"Your father has come to see your dress, dear," said her
mother in the voice of a woman from whom sentiment
overflowed in every tone, in every look, in every gesture.

Turning quickly, Virginia met the smiling eyes of the
Rector - those young and visionary eyes, which Nature,
with a wistful irony, had placed beneath beetling brows in
the creased and wrinkled face of an old man. The eyes
were those of a prophet - of one who had lived his life in
the light of a transcendent inspiration rather than by the
prosaic rule of practical reason; but the face belonged to a
man who had aged before his time under the accumulated
stress of physical burdens.

"How do I look, father? Am I pretty?" asked Virginia,
stretching her thin young arms out on either side of her,
and waiting with parted lips to drink in his praise.

"Almost as beautiful as your mother, and she grows
lovelier every day that she lives, doesn't she?"

His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a
crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing
features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife.
In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for
thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in
her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it
almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical
union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in
which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the
substance, and he saw her always as

she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if
the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never
darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a
startled realization that her mother - her
own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious
eyes - had once been as young and radiant as she. The
love of her parents for each other had always seemed to
her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone
of romance as her own love for them - for, like most
young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with
bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of
youth.

"In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied
Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she
flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders.

"Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I
shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a
key."

"But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to
bed, father?"

"I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely
home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered
Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase,
Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a
procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in
John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted
doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the
faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured
servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the
incident was, it was one of the moments which stood
out afterwards in Virginia's

memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of
such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the
years had not taught her this on that May evening.

On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow
flowers among the branches of poplar trees, and beneath
them Mrs. Goode and Abby - a loud, handsome girl, with
a coarsened complexion and a "sporting" manner
- received their guests and waved them on to a
dancing platform which had been raised between a rose-crowned
summer-house and the old brick wall at the foot
of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the platform,
from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the
end of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue,
and yellow paper were hanging. The air was scented with
honeysuckle, and from an obscure corner behind a trellis
the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was not of a
classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was
aware of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste
for Wagner at the beginning of the next century, could listen
in the eighties with what was perhaps a sincerer pleasure,
to stringed instruments, a little rough, but played with
fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted off in John
Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised
him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and
a pang shot through her heart where the daring joy had
been only a moment before. Then the music grew suddenly
heavy while she felt her feet drag in the waltz. The smell of
honeysuckle made her sad as if it brought back to her
senses an unhappy association which she could not
remember,

and it seemed to her that her soul and body trembled, like
a bent flame, an attitude of expectancy.

"Let me stop a minute. I want to watch the others," she
said, drawing back into the scented dusk under a rose
arbour.

"But don't you want to fill your card? If the men once
catch sight of you, you won't have a dance left."

"No - no, I want to watch a while," she said, with so
strange an accent of irritation that he stared at her in
surprise. The suspense in her heart hurt her like a drawn
cord in throbbing flesh, and she felt angry with John Henry
because he was so dull that he could not see how she
suffered. In the distance, under the waving gilded leaves of
the poplars, she saw Abby laughing up into a man's face,
and she thought: "Can he possibly be in love with Abby?
Some men are mad about her, but I know he isn't. He
could never like a loud woman, and, besides, he couldn't
have looked at me that way if he hadn't cared." Then it
seemed to her that something of the aching suspense in her
own heart stole into Abby's laughing face while she
watched it, and from Abby it passed onward into the faces
of all the girls who were dancing on the raised platform.
Suspense! Was that a woman's life, after all? Never to be
able to go out and fight for what one wanted! Always to sit
at home and wait, without moving a foot or lifting a hand
toward happiness! Never to dare gallantly! Never even to
suffer openly! Always to will in secret, always to hope in
secret, always to triumph or to fail in secret. Never to be
one's self - never to let one's soul or body relax from the
attitude of expectancy

into the attitude of achievement. For the first time, born of
the mutinous longing in her heart, there came to her the
tragic vision of life. The faces of the girls, whirling in white
muslin to the music of the waltz, became merged into one,
and this was the face of all womanhood. Love, sorrow,
hope, regret, wonder, all the sharp longing and the slow
waiting of the centuries - above all the slow
waiting - these things were in her brief vision of that single
face that looked back at her out of the whirling dance.
Then the music stopped, the one face dissolved into many
faces, and from among them Susan passed under the
swinging lanterns and came towards her.

"Oh, Jinny, where have you been hiding? I promised
Oliver I would find you for him. He says he came only to
look at you."

The music began joyously again; the young leaves, gilded
by the yellow lantern-light, danced in the warm wind as if
they were seized by the spirit of melody; and from the dusk
of the trellis the ravished sweetness of honeysuckle flooded
the garden with fragrance. With the vanished sadness in her
heart there fled the sadness in the waltz and in the faces of
the girls who danced to the music. Waiting no longer
seemed pain to her, for it was enriched now by the burning
sweetness of fulfilment.

Suddenly, for she had not seen him approach, she was
conscious that he was at her side, looking down at her
beneath a lantern which was beginning to flicker. A sense
of deep peace - of perfect contentment with the world as
God planned it - took possession of her. Even the minutes
of suspense seemed good because they had brought at last
this swift

rush of happiness. Every line of his face - of that face
which had captured her imagination as though it had been
the face of her dreams - was illumined by the quivering
light that gilded the poplars. His eyes were so close to hers
that she saw little flecks of gold on the brown, and she
grew dizzy while she looked into them, as if she stood on a
height and feared to turn lest she should lose her balance
and fall. A delicious stillness, which began in her brain and
passed to her throbbing pulses, enveloped her like a
perfume. While she stood there she was incapable of
thought - except the one joyous thought that this was the
moment for which she had waited since the hour of her
birth. Never could she be the same afterwards! Never
could she be unhappy again in the future! For, like other
mortals in other ecstatic instants, see surrendered herself to
the intoxicating illusion of their immortality.

After that silence, so charged with emotion for them
both, it seemed that when he spoke it must be to utter
words that would enkindle the world to beauty; but he said
merely: "Is this dance free? I came only to speak to you."

His look added, "I came because my longing had grown
unbearable"; and though she replied only to his words, it
was his look that made the honeysuckle-trellis, the yellow
lanterns, and the sky, with its few soft stars, go round like
coloured balls before her eyes. The world melted away
from her, and the distance between her and the whirling
figures in white muslin seemed greater than the distance
between star and star. She had the sense of spiritual
remoteness, of shining isolation, which ecstasy brings to the heart

of youth, as though she had escaped from the control of
ordinary phenomena and stood in a blissful pause beyond
time and space. It was the supreme moment of love; and
to her, whose soul acknowledged no other supremacy
than that of love, it was, also, the supreme moment of life.

His face, as he gazed down at her under the swinging leaves,
seemed to her as different from all other faces as the
exquisite violence in her soul was different from all other
emotions she had ever known. She knew nothing more of
him than that she could not be happy away from him. She
needed no more infallible proof of his perfection than the
look in his eyes when he smiled at her. So convincing was
the argument of his smile that it was not only impregnable
against any assault of facts, but rendered futile even the
underlying principle of reason. Had Aristotle himself risen
from his grave to prove to her that blind craving when
multiplied by blind possession does not equal happiness,
his logic would have been powerless before that
unconquerable instinct which denied its truth. And around
them little white moths, fragile as rose-leaves, circled
deliriously in the lantern-light, for they, also, obeyed an
unconquerable instinct which told them that happiness
dwelt in the flame above which they were whirling.

"I am glad you wore blue ribbons" he said suddenly.

Her lashes trembled and fell, but they could not hide the
glow that shone in her eyes and in the faint smile which
trembled, like an edge of light, on her lips.

"Will you come into the summer-house and sit out this
dance?" he asked when she did not speak, and she
followed him under the hanging clusters of

early roses to a bench in the dusk beside a little rustic table.
Here, after a moment's silence, he spoke again
recklessly, yet with a certain constraint of manner.

"I suppose I oughtn't to have come here to-night."

"Why not?" Their glances, bright as swords, crossed
suddenly, and it seemed to her that the music grew
louder. Had it been of any use, she would have prayed Life
to dole the minutes out, one by one, like a miser. And all
the time she was thinking: "This is the moment I've waited
for ever since I was born. It has come. I am in the midst of
it. How can I keep it forever?"

"Well, I haven't any business thinking about anything but
my work," he answered. "I've broken with my uncle, you
know. I'm as poor as a church mouse and I'll never be
better off until I get a play on the stage. For the next few
years I've got to cut out everything but hard work."

"Yes." Her tongue was paralyzed; she couldn't say what
she felt, and everything else seemed to her horribly
purposeless and ineffectual. She wondered passionately if
he thought her a fool, for she could not look into his mind
and discover how adorable he found her monosyllabic
responses. The richness of her beauty combined with the
poverty of her speech made an irresistible appeal to the
strongest part of him, which was not his heart, but his
imagination. He wondered what she would say if she were
really to let herself go, and this wonder began gradually to
enslave him.

"That's the reason I hadn't any business coming here,"
he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again
ever since that first afternoon.

I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed
way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you
would wear a red rose in your hair."

At his change of tone, she reached up suddenly, plucked
the rose from her hair and flung it out on the grass. Her
action, which belied her girlish beauty so strangely that only
her mother would have recognized it as characteristic of
the hidden force of the woman, held him for an instant
speechless under her laughing eyes. Then turning away, he
picked up the rose and put it into his pocket.

"I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he
asked.

She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know.
Something took me."

"Did you think I came just for the rose?"

"I didn't think."

"If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do
you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen
you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see
you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you."

She was not looking at him, but in every line of her
figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she
drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her
whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an
exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the
purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose
light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown
by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by
some outside power which was stronger than his will. An

enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same
instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew
that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to
do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk,
and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the
scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the
sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space
that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever
felt - memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of
summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds - all
these were packed like honey into that single minute of
love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the
exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities
which passion brings to the young. Never before had he
realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant
had he seen his own soul in the making! All the
unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the
flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided
between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness.
He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle
and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died
rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with
which she regarded him. To have her always gentle,
always passive, never reaching out her hand, never
descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and
colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and
unwearied, to crown the victory - this was what the
conquering male in him demanded.

"I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to
convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you
from the others."

She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle
of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the
clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed
suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and
in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to
his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's
power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its
fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion
over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the
movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life.
A strange stillness surrounded her - as though she were
separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond
the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house - and into
this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very
essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead
women of her race flowed through her into the softness of
the spring evening. Things were there which she could
know only through her blood - all the mute patience, all
the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with
the merely physical end of love - these were in that
voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them,
there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service,
pity, loyalty, and sacrifice.

"I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled
with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his
service.

"You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you
my troubles."

"I don't think you are selfish - of course you have to
think of your work - a man's work means so much to
him."

"It's wonderful of you to feel that," he replied; and,
indeed, at the instant while he searched her eyes in the
dusk, the words seemed to him to embody all the
sympathetic understanding with which his imagination
endowed her. How perfectly her face expressed the
goodness and gentleness of her soul! What a companion
she would make to a man! What a lover! What a wife!
Always soft, exquisite, tender, womanly to the innermost
fibre of her being, and perfect in unselfishness as all
womanly women are. How easy it would be to work if she
were somewhere within call, ready to fly to him at a word!
How glorious to go out into the world if he knew that she
sat at home waiting - always waiting, with those eyes like
wells of happiness, until he should return to her! A new
meaning had entered swiftly into life. A feeling that was like
a religious conversion had changed not only his spiritual
vision, but the material aspect of nature. Whatever
happened, he felt that he could never be the same man
again.

"I shall see you soon?" he said, and the words fell like
snow on the inner flame of his senses.

"Oh, soon!" she answered, bending a little towards him
while a sudden glory illumined her features. Her voice,
which was vibrant as a harp, had captured the wistful
magic of the spring - the softness of the winds, the
sweetness of flowers, the mellow murmuring of the poplars.

She rose from the bench, moving softly as if she were
under an enchantment which she feared to break by a
gesture. An ecstasy as inarticulate as grief kept him silent,
and it was into this silence that the voice of Abby floated,
high, shrill, and dominant.

She bounced, as only the solid actuality can bounce, into
the dream, precipitating the unwelcome presence of Mr.
Carrington - a young man with a golden beard and the
manner of a commercial minor prophet - there also. A
few minutes later, as Virginia drifted away in his arms to
the music of the waltz, she saw,
over the heads of the dancers, Oliver and Abby walking
slowly in the direction of the gate. A feeling of unreality
seized her, as though she were looking through an azure
veil at the world. The dancers among whom she whirled,
the anxious mothers sitting uneasily on chairs under the
poplars, the flowering shrubs, the rose-crowned summer-house,
the yellow lanterns with the clouds of white moths
circling around them - all these things had turned suddenly
to shadows; and through a phantom garden, the one living
figure moved beside an empty shape, which was Abby.
Her feet had wings. She flew rather than danced in the
arms of a shadow through this blue veil which enveloped
her. Life burned within her like a flame in a porcelain vase,
and this inner fire separated her, as genius separates its
possessor, from the ordinary mortals among whom she
moved.

Walking home with John Henry after the party was over,
it seemed to her that she was lifted up and cradled in all the
wonderful freshness of the spring. The sweet moist air
fanned her face; the morning stars shone softly on her
through the pearly mist; and the pale fingers of dawn were
spread like a beneficent hand, above the eastern horizon.
"To-morrow!" cried

her heart, overflowing with joy; and something of this joy
passed into the saddest hour of day and brightened it to
radiance.

At the gate she parted from John Henry, and running
eagerly along the path, opened the front door, which was
unlocked, and burst into the dining-room, where her
mother, wearied of her long watch, had fallen asleep
beside the lamp, which was beginning to flicker.

"To-morrow!" still sang her heart, and the wild, sweet
music of it filled the world. "To-morrow!"

CHAPTER IX
THE GREAT MAN MOVES
SEVERAL weeks later, at
the close of a June
afternoon, Cyrus Treadwell sat alone on the back porch of
his house in Bolingbroke Street. He was smoking, and,
between the measured whiffs of his pipe, he leaned over
the railing and spat into a bed of miniature sunflowers
which grew along the stone ledge of the area. For thirty
years these flowers had sprung up valiantly every spring in
that bleak strip of earth, and for thirty years Cyrus had
spat among them while he smoked alone on the back
porch on June afternoons.

While he sat there a great peace enfolded and possessed
him. The street beyond the sagging wooden gate was still;
the house behind him was still; the kitchen, in which
showed the ebony silhouette of a massive cook kneading
dough, was still with the uncompromising stillness of the
Sabbath. In the midst of this stillness, his thoughts, which
were usually as angular as lean birds on a bough, lost their
sharpness of outline and melted into a vague and feathery
mass. At the moment it was impossible to know of what he
was thinking, but he was happy with the happiness which
visits men of small parts and of sterile imagination. By
virtue of these limitations and this sterility he had risen out
of obscurity - for the spiritual law which decrees that to
gain the world one must give up one's

soul, was exemplified in him as in all his class. Success, the
shibboleth of his kind, had controlled his thoughts and even
his impulses so completely for years that he had come at
last to resemble an animal less than he resembled a
machine; and Nature (who has a certain large and careless
manner of dispensing justice) had punished him in the end
by depriving him of the ordinary animal capacity for
pleasure. The present state of vacuous contentment was,
perhaps, as near the condition of enjoyment as he would
ever approach.

Half an hour before he had had an encounter with Susan
on the subject of her going to college, but even his victory,
which had been sharp and swift, was robbed of all
poignant satisfaction by his native inability to imagine what
his refusal must have meant to her. The girl had stood
straight and tall, with her commanding air, midway between
the railing and the weather-stained door of the house.

"Father, I want to go to college," she had said quite
simply, for she was one who used words very much as
Cyrus used money, with a temperamental avoidance of all
extravagance.

Her demand was a direct challenge to the male in Cyrus,
and, though this creature could not be said to be either
primitive or predatory, he was still active enough to defend
himself from the unprovoked assault of an offspring.

"Tut-tut," he responded. "If you want some thing to
occupy you, you'd better start about helping your mother
with her preserving."

"Well, the blackberries are coming along. I was always
partial to blackberries."

He sat there, bald, shrunken, yellow, as soulless as a
steam engine, and yet to Susan he represented a pitiless
manifestation of destiny - of those deaf, implacable forces
by which the lives of men and women are wrecked. He
had the power to ruin her life, and yet he would never see it
because he had been born blind. That in his very blindness
had lain his strength, was a fact which, naturally enough,
escaped her for the moment. The one thought of which she
was conscious was a fierce resentment against life because
such men possessed such power over others.

"If you will lend me the money, I will pay it back to you
as soon as I can take a position," she said, almost
passionately.

Something that was like the ghost of a twinkle appeared
in his eyes, and he let fall presently one of his rare pieces of
humour.

"If you'd like a chance to repay me for your education,"
he said, "there's your schooling at Miss Priscilla's still
owing, and I'll take it out in help about the housekeeping."

Then Susan went, because going in silence was the only
way that she could save the shreds of dignity which
remained to her, and bending forward, with a contented
chuckle, Cyrus spat benevolently down upon the miniature
sunflowers.

In the half hour that followed he did not think of his
daughter. From long discipline his mind had fallen out of
the habit of thinking of people except in their relation to the
single vital interest of his life, and this interest was not
fatherhood. Susan was an incident -

a less annoying incident, it is true, than Belinda - but
still an incident. An inherent contempt for women, due partly to
qualities of temperament and partly to the accident of a
disillusioning marriage, made him address them always as if
he were speaking from a platform. And, as is often the
case with men of cold-blooded sensuality, women, from
Belinda downward, had taken their revenge upon him.

The front door-bell jangled suddenly, and a little later he
heard a springy step passing along the hall. Then the green
lattice door of the porch opened, and the face of Mrs.
Peachey, wearing the look of unnatural pleasantness which
becomes fixed on the features of persons who spend their
lives making the best of things, appeared in the spot where
Susan had been half an hour before. She had trained her lips
to smile so persistently and so unreasonably, that when, as
now, she would have preferred to present a serious
countenance to an observer, she found it impossible to relax
the muscles of her mouth from their expression of perpetual
cheerfulness. Cyrus, who had once remarked of her that he
didn't believe she could keep a straight face at her own
funeral, wondered, while he rose and offered her a chair,
whether the periodical sprees of honest Tom were the
cause or the result of the look of set felicity she wore. For
an instant he was tempted to show his annoyance at the
intrusion. Then, because she was a pretty woman and did
not belong to him, he grew almost playful, with the
playfulness of an uncertain tempered ram that is offered salt.

and she really felt it. "I was on my way upstairs to see
Belinda, and it just crossed my mind as I saw you sitting
out here, that I'd better stop and speak to you about your
nephew. I wonder Belinda doesn't plant a few rose-bushes
along that back wall," she added.

"I'd pay you fifty dollars, ma'am, if you'd get Belinda to
plant anything" - which was not delicately put, perhaps,
but was, after all, spoken in the only language that Cyrus
knew.

"I thought she was so fond of flowers. She used to be as
a girl."

"Humph!" was Cyrus's rejoinder, and then: "Well,
what about my nephew, madam?" Clasping his bony
hands over his knee, he leaned forward and waited, not
without curiosity, for her answer. He did not admire
Oliver - he even despised him - but when all was said, the
boy had succeeded in riveting his attention. However
poorly he might think of him, the fact remained that think of
him he did. The young man was in the air as inescapably as
if he were the measles.

"I'm worrying about him, Mr. Treadwell; I can't help
myself. You know he boards with me."

"Yes'm, I know," replied Cyrus - for he had heard the
fact from Miss Priscilla on his way home from church one
Sunday.

"And he's not well. There's something the matter with
him. He's so nervous and irritable that he's almost crazy.
He doesn't eat a morsel, and I can hear him pacing up and
down his room until daybreak. Once I got up and went
upstairs to ask him if he was sick, but he said that he was
perfectly well and was walking about for exercise. I am
sure I don't know

what it can be, but if it keeps up, he'll land in an asylum
before the summer is over."

The look of satisfaction which her first words had
brought to Cyrus's face deepened gradually as her story
unfolded. "He's wanting money, I reckon," he commented,
his imagination seizing upon the only medium in which it
could work. As a philosopher may discern in all life
different manifestations of the Deity, so he saw in all
affliction only the wanting of money under varied aspects.
Sorrows in which the lack of money did not bear a part
always seemed to him to be unnecessary and generally
self-inflicted by the sufferers. Of such people he would say
impatiently that they took a morbid view of their troubles
and were "nursing grief."

"I don't think it's that," said Mrs. Peachey. "He always
pays his bills promptly on the first day of the month, and I
know that he gets checks from New York for the writing
he does. I'm sometimes tempted to believe that he has
fallen in love."

"Love? Pshaw!" said Cyrus, and dismissed the
passion.

"But it goes hard with some people, and he's one of that
kind," rejoined the little lady, with spirit, for in spite of her
wholesome awe of Cyrus, she could not bear to hear the
sentiment derided. "We aren't all as sensible as you are,
Mr. Treadwell."

"Well, if he is in love, as you say, whom is he in love
with?" demanded Cyrus.

"It's all guesswork," answered Mrs. Peachey. "He isn't
paying attention to any girl that I know of - but, I suppose,
if it's anybody, it must be Virginia Pendleton. All the young
men are crazy about her."

She had been prepared for opposition - she had been
prepared, being a lady, for anything, as she told Tom
afterwards, short of an oath - but to her amazement the
unexpected, which so rarely happened in the case of
Cyrus, happened at that minute. Human nature, which she
had treated almost as a science, proved suddenly that it
was not even an art. One of those glaring inconsistencies
which confute every theory and overturn all psychology
was manifested before her.

"That's the daughter of old Gabriel, aint it?" asked
Cyrus, and unconsciously to himself, his voice softened.

"Yes, she's Gabriel's daughter, and one of the sweetest
girls that ever lived."

"Gabriel's a good man," said Cyrus. "I always liked
Gabriel. We fought through the war together."

"A better man never lived, nor a better woman than
Lucy. If she's got a fault on earth, it's that she's too
unselfish."

"Well, if this girl takes after them, the young fool has
shown more sense than I gave him credit for."

"I don't think he's a fool," returned Mrs. Peachey,
reflecting how wonderfully she had "managed" the great
man, "but, of course, he's queer - all writers are queer,
aren't they?"

"He's kept it up longer than I thought, but I reckon he's
about ready to give in," pursued Cyrus, ignoring her
question as he did all excursions into the region of abstract
wonder. "If he'll start in to earn his living now, I'll let him
have a job on the railroad out in Matoaca City. I meant to
teach him a lesson, but I shouldn't like Henry's son to
starve. I've nothing against Henry except that he was too
soft. He was a

"Perhaps, if you'd talk to Oliver," suggested Mrs.
Peachey. "I'm afraid I couldn't induce him to come to you,
but - "

"Oh, I ain't proud - I don't need to be," interrupted
Cyrus with a chuckle. "Only fools and the poor have any
use for pride. I'll look in upon him sometime along after
supper, and see if he's come to his wits since I last talked
to him."

"Then, I'm glad I came to you. Tom would be horrified
almost to death if he knew of it - but I've always said that
when an idea crosses my mind just like that," she snapped
her thumb and forefinger, "there's something in it."

As she rose from her seat, she looked up at him with
the coquetry which was so inalienable an attribute of her
soul that, had the Deity assumed masculine shape before
her, she would instinctively have used this weapon to
soften the severity of His judgment. "It was so kind of you
not to send me away, Mr. Treadwell," she said in honeyed
accents.

"It is a pleasure to meet such a sensible woman,"
replied Cyrus, with awkward gallantry. Her flattery had
warmed him pleasantly, and in the midst of the dried husks
of his nature, he was conscious suddenly that a single
blade of living green still survived. He had ceased to feel
old - he felt almost young again - and this rejuvenation had
set in merely because a middle aged woman, whom he
had known since childhood had shown an innocent
pleasure in his society. Mrs. Peachey's traditional belief in
the power of sex had proved its own justification.

When she had left him, Cyrus sat down again, and took
up his pipe from the railing where he had placed it. "I'll go
round and have some words with the young scamp," he
thought. "There's no use waiting until after supper. I'll go
round now while it is light."

Then, as if the softening impulse were a part of the
Sabbath stillness, he leaned over the bed of sunflowers,
and fixed his eyes on the pinkish tower of Saint James'
Church, which he could see palely enkindled against the
afterglow. A single white cloud floated like a dove in the
west, and beneath it a rain of light fell on the shadowy
roofs of the town. The air was so languorous that it was as
if the day were being slowly smothered in honeysuckle, the
heavy scent of which drifted to him from the next garden.
A vast melancholy - so vast that it seemed less the effect
of a Southern summer than of a universal force residing in
nature - was liberated, with the first cooling breath of the
evening, from man and beast, from tree and shrub, from
stock and stone. The very bricks, sun-baked and scarred,
spoke of the weariness of heat, of the parching thirst of the
interminable summers.

But to Cyrus the languor and the intense sweetness of
the air suggested only that the end of a hot day had come.
"It's likely to be a drought," he was thinking while his
upward gaze rested on the illuminated tower of the church.
"A drought will go hard with the tobacco."

Having emptied his pipe, he was about to take down
his straw hat from a nail on the wall, when the sound of the
opening gate arrested him, and he waited with his eyes
fixed on the winding brick walk, where the negro
washerwoman appeared presently with a basket

of clean clothes on her head. Beneath her burden be
saw that there were some primitive attempts at Sunday
adornment. She wore a green muslin dress, a little
discoloured by perspiration, but with many compensating
flounces; a bit of yellow ribbon floated from her throat, and
in her hand she carried the festive hat which would
decorate her head after the removal of the basket. Her
figure, which had once been graceful, had grown heavy;
and her face, of a light gingerbread colour, with broad, not
unpleasant features, wore a humble, inquiring look - the
look of some trustful wild animal that man has tamed and
only partly domesticated. Approaching the steps, she
brought down the basket from her head, and came on,
holding it with a deprecating swinging movement in front of
her.

"Howdy, Marster," she said, as if uncertain whether to
stop or to pass on into the doorway.

Lowering the basket to the floor of the porch, the
woman drew a red bandanna handkerchief from her
bosom and began slowly to wipe the drops of sweat from
her face and neck. The acrid odour of her flesh reached
Cyrus, but he made no movement to draw away from her.

"I'se been laid up wid er stitch in my side, Marster, so
I'se jes got dese yer close done dis mawnin'. Dar wan'
noner de chillen at home ter tote um down yer, so I low I
'uz gwine ter drap by wid um on my way ter church."

As he did not reply, she hesitated an instant and over
her features, which looked as if they had been flattened by
a blow, there came an expression which was

half scornful, half inviting, yet so little personal that it might
have been worn by one of her treetop ancestors while he
looked down from his sheltering boughs on a superior
species of the jungle. The chance effect of light and
shadow on a grey rock was hardly less human or more
primitive.

"Nonsense, Mandy, you ain't a day over thirty-five.
There's a plenty of life left in you yet."

"Go way f'om yer, Marster; you knows I'se a heap
older 'n dat. How long ago was hit I done fust come yer
ter you all?"

He thought a moment. A question of calculation always
interested him, and he prided himself on his fine memory
for dates.

"You came the year our son Henry died, didn't you?
That was in '66 - eighteen years ago. Why, you couldn't
have been over fifteen that summer."

For the first time a look of cunning - of the pathetic
cunning of a child pitted against a man - awoke in her
face.

"En Miss Lindy sent me off befo' de year was up,
Marster. My boy Jubal was born de mont' atter she
done tu'n me out." She hesitated a minute, and then added,
with a kind of savage coquetry, "I 'uz a moughty likely
gal, Marster. You ain't done furgit dat, is you?"

Her words touched Cyrus like the flick of a whip on a
sore, and he drew back quickly while his thin lips grew
tight.

In the negress's face an expression of surprise wavered
for a second and then disappeared. Her features resumed
their usual passive and humble look - a look which said,
if Cyrus could have read human nature as easily as he read
finance, "I don't understand, but I submit without
understanding. Am I not what you have made me? Have I
not been what you wanted? And yet you despise me for
being the thing you made."

"I'll not give you a red cent more. If you don't want it,
you can leave it. Get out of here!"

All the primitive antagonism of race - that instinct older
than civilization - was in the voice with which he ordered
her out of his sight. "It was downright blackmail. The fool
was trying to blackmail me," he thought. "If I'd yielded an
inch I'd have been at her mercy. It's a pretty pass things
have come to when men have to protect themselves from
negro women." The more he reflected on her impudence,
the stronger grew his conviction that he had acted
remarkably well. "Nipped it in the root. If I hadn't - " he
thought.

And behind him in the doorway the washerwoman
continued to regard him, over the lowered clothes basket,
with her humble and deprecating look, which

said, like the look of a beaten animal: "I don't understand,
but I submit without understanding because you are stronger
than I."

Taking down his hat, Cyrus turned away from her, and
descended the steps. "I'll look up Henry's son before
supper," he was thinking. "Even if the boy's a fool, I'm not
one to let those of my own blood come to want."

CHAPTER X
OLIVER SURRENDERS
WHEN Cyrus's knock came
at his door, Oliver crossed
the room to let in his visitor, and then fell back, startled, at
the sight of his uncle. "I wonder what has brought him
here?" he thought inhospitably. But even if he had put the
question, it is doubtful if Cyrus could have enlightened
him - for the great man was so seldom visited by an
impulse that when, as now, one actually took possession of
him, he obeyed the pressure almost unconsciously. Like
most men who pride themselves upon acting solely from
reason, he was the abject slave of the few instincts which
had managed to take root and thrive in the stony ground of
his nature. The feeling for family, which was so closely
entwined with his supreme feeling for property that the two
had become inseparable, moved him to-day as it had done
on the historic occasion when he had redeemed the
mortgaged roof over the heads of his spinster relations.
Perhaps, too, some of the vague softness of June had risen
in him and made him gentler in his judgments of youth.

"I didn't expect you or I'd have straightened up a bit,"
said Oliver, not overgraciously, while he hastily pushed his
supper of bread and tea to one end of the table. He
resented what he called in his mind "the intrusion," and he
had no particular objection to

his uncle's observing his resentment. His temper, never of
the most perfect equilibrium, had been entirely upset by
the effects of a June Sunday in Dinwiddie, and the affront
of Cyrus's visit had become an indignity because of his
unfortunate selection of the supper hour. Some hidden
obliquity in the Treadwell soul, which kept it always at
cross-purposes with life, prevented any lessening of the
deep antagonism between the old and the young of the
race. And so incurable was this obliquity in the soul of
Cyrus, that it forced him now to take a tone which he had
resolutely set his mind against from the moment of Mrs.
Peachey's visit. He wanted to be pleasant, but something
deep down within him - some inherited tendency to
bully - was stronger than his will.

"I looked in to see if you hadn't about come to your
senses," he began.

"If you mean come to your way of looking at things
- then I haven't," replied Oliver, and added in a more
courteous tone, "Won't you sit down?"

"No, sir, I can stand long enough to say what I came to
say," retorted the other, and it seemed to him that the
pleasanter he tried to make his voice, the harsher grew the
sound of it in his ears. What was it about the rascal that
rubbed him the wrong way only to look at him?

"As you please," replied Oliver quietly. "What in thunder
has he got to say to me?" he thought. "And why can't he
say it and have it over?" While Cyrus merely despised
him, he detested Cyrus with all the fiery intolerance of his
age. "Standing there like an old turkey gobbler, ugh!" he
said contemptuously to himself.

"So you ain't hungry yet?" asked the old man, and felt
that the words were forced out of him by that obstinate
cross-grain in his nature over which he had no control.

"I've just had tea."

"You haven't changed your mind since you last spoke
to me, eh?"

"No, I haven't changed my mind. Why should I?"

"Getting along pretty well, then?"

"As well as I expected to."

"That's good," said Cyrus mildly. "That's good. I just
dropped in to make sure that you were getting along,
that's all."

"Thank you," responded Oliver, and tried from the
bottom of his soul to make the words sincere.

"If the time ever comes when you feel that you have
changed your mind, I'll find a place out at Matoaca City
for you. I just wanted you to understand that I'd do as
much for Henry's son then as now. If you weren't Henry's
son, I shouldn't think twice about you."

"You mean that you'll still give me the job if I stop
writing plays?"

"Oh, I won't make a point of that as long as it doesn't
interfere with your work. You may write in off hours as
much as you want to. I won't make a point of that."

"You mean to be generous, I can see - but I don't think
it likely that I shall ever make up my mind to take a
regular job. I'm not built for it."

"You're not thinking about getting married, then, I
reckon?"

A dark flush rose to Oliver's forehead, and turning
away, he stared with unseeing eyes out of the window.

"Well, well, you're young yet, and you may be in want
of a wife before you're many years older."

"I'm not the kind to marry. I'm too fond of my
freedom."

"Most of us have felt like that at one time or another, but
when the thought of a woman takes you by the throat,
you'll begin to see things differently. And if you ever do, a
good steady job at twelve hundred a year will be what
you'll look out for."

"I suppose a man could marry on that down here," said
Oliver, half unconscious that he was speaking aloud.

"I married on less, and I've known plenty of others that
have done so. A good saving wife puts more into a man's
pocket than she takes out of it."

As he paused, Oliver's attention, which had wandered off
into a vague mist of feeling, became suddenly riveted to the
appalling spectacle of his uncle's marriage. He saw the
house in Bolingbroke Street, with the worn drab oilcoth in
the hall, and he smelt the smell of stale cooking which
floated through the green lattice door at the back. All the
sweetness of life, all the beauty, all the decency even,
seemed strangled in that smell as if in some malarial air.
And in the midst of it, the unkempt, slack figure of Belinda,
with her bitter eyes and her sagging skirt, passed
perpetually under the flickering gas-jet up and down the
dimly lighted staircase. This was how one marriage had
ended - one marriage among many which had started out
with passion and courage and the belief in happiness.
Knowing but little of the April brevity of his

uncle's mating impulse, he had mentally embroidered the
bare instinct with some of the idealism in which his own
emotion was clothed. His imagination pictured Cyrus and
Belinda starting as light-hearted adventurers to sail the
chartless seas of romance. What remained of their gallant
ship to-day except a stark and battered hulk wrecked on
the pitiless rocks of the actuality? A month ago that
marriage had seemed merely ridiculous to him. Standing
now beside the little window, where the wan face of
evening, languid and fainting sweet, looked in from the
purple twilight, he was visited by one of those rare flashes
of insight which come to men of artistic sensibility after long
periods of spiritual warfare. Pity stabbed him as sharply as
ridicule had done a moment before, and with the first sense
of human kinship he had ever felt to Cyrus, he understood
suddenly the tragedy that underlies all comic things. Could
there be a deeper pathos, after all, than simply being
funny? This absurd old man, with his lean, crooked figure,
his mottled skin, and his piercing bloodshot eyes, like the
eyes of an overgorged bird of prey, appeared now as an
object that moved one to tears, not to laughter. And yet
because of this very quality which made him pitiable - this
vulture-like instinct to seize and devour the smaller - he
stood to-day the most conspicuously envied figure in
Dinwiddie.

"I'm not the kind of man to marry," he repeated, but his
tone had changed.

"Well, perhaps you're wise," said Cyrus, "but if you
should ever want to - " The confidence which had gone out
of Oliver had passed into him. With his strange power of
reading human nature - masculine

human nature, for the silliest woman could fool him
hopelessly - he saw that his nephew was already
beginning to struggle against the temptation to yield. And
he was wise enough to know that this temptation would
become stronger as soon as Oliver felt that the outside
pressure was removed. The young man's passion was
putting forward a subtler argument than Cyrus could offer.

When his visitor had gone, Oliver turned back to the
window, and resting his arms on the sill, leaned out into the
velvet softness of the twilight. His wide vision had deserted
him. It was as if his gaze had narrowed down to a few
roofs and the single street without a turning - but beyond
them the thought of Virginia lay always like an enclosed
garden of sweetness and bloom. To think of her was to
pass from the scorching heat of the day to the freshness of
dew-washed flowers under the starlight.

"It is impossible," he said aloud, and immediately, as if in
answer to a challenge, a thousand proofs came to him that
other men were doing the impossible every day. How
many writers - great writers, too - would have jumped at
a job on a railroad to insure them against starvation? How
many had married young and faced the future on less than
twelve hundred dollars a year? How many had let love
lead them where it would without butting their brains
forever against the damned wall of expediency?

"It's impossible," he said again, and turning from the
window, made himself ready to go out. While he brushed
his hair and pulled the end of his necktie through the loop,
his gaze wandered back over the roofs to where a
solitary mimosa tree drooped against

the lemon-coloured afterglow. The dust lay like gauze
over the distance. Not a breath stirred. Not a leaf fell. Not
a figure moved in the town - except the crouching figure of
a stray cat that crawled, in search of food, along the brick
wall under the dead tree.

"God! What a life!" he cried suddenly. And beyond this
parching desert of the present he saw again that enclosed
garden of sweetness and bloom, which was Virginia. His
resolution, weakened by the long hot afternoon, seemed
to faint under the pressure of his longing. All the burden of
the day - the heat, the languor, the scorching thirst of the
fields, the brazen blue of the sky, the stillness as of a
suspended breath which wrapt the town - all these things
had passed into the intolerableness of his desire. He felt it
like a hot wind blowing over him, and it seemed to him that
he was as helpless as a leaf in the current of this wind
which was sweeping him onward. Something older than his
will was driving him; and this something had come to him
from out the twilight, where the mimosa trees drooped like
a veil against the afterglow.

Taking up his hat, he left the room and descended the
stairs to the wide hall where Tom Peachey sat, gasping for
breath, midway of two open doors.

"I'll be darned if I can make a draught," muttered the
old soldier irascibly, while he picked up his alpaca coat
from the balustrade, and slipped into it before going out
upon the front porch into the possible presence of ladies.
His usually cheerful face was clouded, for his habitual
apathy had deserted him, and he had reached the painful
decision that when you looked things squarely in the face
there was precious little that was worth living for - a
conclusion to which he

had been brought by the simple accident of an overdose
of Kentucky rye in his mint julep after church. The
overdose had sent him to sleep too soon after his Sunday
dinner, and when he had awakened from his heavy and by
no means quiet slumber, he had found himself confronting a
world of gloom.

"I'm damned tired making the best of things, if you want
to know what is the matter with me," he had remarked
crossly to his wife.

"The idea, Mr. Peachey! You ought to be ashamed
of yourself!" that sprightly lady had responded while
she prepared herself for her victory over Cyrus.

"Well, I ain't," honest Tom had retorted. "I've gone on
pretending for fifty years and I'm going to stop it. What
good has it done, anyway? It hasn't put a roof on, has it?"

"I told you you oughtn't to go to sleep right on top of
your dinner," she had replied soothingly. "I declare you're
perfectly purple. I never saw you so upset. Here, take this
palm-leaf fan and go and see if you can't find a draught.
You know it's downright sinful to talk that way after the
Lord has been so good to you."

But Philosophy, though she is unassailable when she
clings to her safeguard of the universal, meets her match
whenever she descends to an open engagement with the
particular.

"W-what's He done for me?" demanded not Tom, but
the whiskey inside of him.

Driven against that bleak rock of fact upon which so
many shining generalizations have come to wreck, Mrs.
Peachey had cast about helplessly for some floating spar
of logic which might bear her to the firm ground

of established optimism. "I declare, Tom, I believe you are
out of your head!" she exclaimed, adding immediately,
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself to be so ungrateful
when the good Lord has kept you out of the poorhouse. If
you weren't tipsy, I'd give you a hard shaking. Now, you
take that palm-leaf fan and go right straight downstairs."

So Tom had gone, for his wife, who lacked the gift of
argument, possessed the energy of character which
renders such minor attributes unnecessary; and Oliver,
passing through the hall a couple of hours later, found him
still helplessly seeking the draught towards which she had
directed him.

"Any chance of a breeze springing up?" inquired the
young man as they moved together to the porch.

The force which was driving him out of the house into
the suffocating streets was in his voice when he spoke, but
honest Tom did not hear it. After the four war years in
which he had been almost sublime, the old soldier had
gradually ceased even to be human, and that vegetable
calm which envelops persons who have fallen into the
habit of sitting still, had endowed him at last with the
perfect serenity of a cabbage. The only active principle
which ever moved in him was the borrowed principle of
alcohol - for when that artificial energy subsided, he sank
back, as he was beginning to do now, into the spritual
inertia which sustains those who have outlived their
capacity for the heroic.

"I ain't felt a breath," he replied, peering southward
where the stars were coming out in a cloudless sky. "I
don't reckon we'll get it till on about eleven."

"You never can tell. There's always a spell in June." And
he who had been a hero, sat down in his cane-bottomed
chair and waved the palm-leaf fan feebly in front of him.
He had had his day; he had fought his fight; he had helped
to make the history of battles - and now what remained
to him? The stainless memory of the four years when he
was a hero; a smoldering ember still left from that flaming
glory which was his soul!

In the street the dust lay thick and still, and the wilted
foliage of the mulberry trees hung motionless from the
great arching boughs. Only an aspen at the corner seemed
alive and tremulous, while sensitive little shivers ran
through the silvery leaves, which looked as if they were cut
out of velvet. As Oliver left the house, the town awoke
slowly from its lethargy, and the sound of laughter floated
to him from the porches behind their screens of
honeysuckle or roses. But even this laughter seemed to
him to contain the burden of weariness which oppressed
and disenchanted his spirit. The pall of melancholy spread
from the winding yellow river at the foot of the hill to the
procession of cedars which stood pitch-black against the
few dim stars on the eastern horizon.

"What is the use?" he asked himself suddenly, uttering
aloud that grim question which lies always beneath the
vivid, richly clustering impressions in the imaginative mind.
Of his struggle, his sacrifice - of his art even - what
was the use? A bitter despondency - the crushing
despondency of youth which age does not feel and has
forgotten - weighed upon him like a physical burden. And
because he was young and not without a certain pride in
the intensity of his suffering, he increased his mirror by doggedly

But the laws that govern the variable mind of man are as
inscrutable as the secret of light. Turning into a cross
street, he came upon the tower of Saint James' Church,
and he grew suddenly cheerful. The quickening of his
pulses changed the aspect of the town as completely as if
an invigorating shower had fallen upon it. The supreme,
haunting interest of life revived.

He had meant merely to pass the rectory without
stopping; but as he turned into the slanting street at the
foot of the twelve stone steps, he saw a glimmer of white on
the terrace, and the face of Virginia looked down at him over
the palings of the gate. Immediately it seemed to him that
he had known from the beginning that he should meet her.
A sense of recognition so piercingly sweet that it stirred his
pulses like wine was in his heart as he moved towards her.
The whole universe appeared to him to have been planned
and perfected for this instant. The languorous June evening,
the fainting sweetness of Bowers, the strange lemon-coloured
afterglow, and her face, shining there like a star in
the twilight - these had waited for him, he felt, since the
beginning of earth. That fatalistic reliance upon an outside
Power, which assumed for him the radiant guise of first
love, and for Susan the stark certainties of
Presbyterianism, dominated him as completely as if he
were the predestined vehicle of its expression.

Ardent, yet passive, Virginia leaned
above him on the dim terrace. So still she seemed that her
breath left her parted lips as softly as the perfume
detached itself from the opening rose-leaves. She made no
gesture, she said no word - but suddenly he became

aware that her stillness was stronger to draw him
than any speech. All her woman's mystery was brooding
there about her in the June twilight; and in this strange
strength of quietness Nature had placed, for once, an
invincible weapon in the weaker hands. Her appeal had
become a part of the terrible and beneficent powers of
Life.

Crossing the street, he went up the steps to where she
leaned on the gate.

"It has been so long," he said, and the words seemed to
him hideously empty. "I have not seen you but three times
since the party."

She did not answer, and as he looked at her closer, he
saw that her eyes were full of tears.

"Virginia!" he cried out sharply, and the next instant, at
her first movement away from him, his arms were around
her and his lips seeking hers.

The world stopped suddenly while a starry eternity
enveloped them. All youth was packed into that minute, all
the troubled sweetness of desire, all the fugitive ecstasy of
fulfilment.

"I - I thought you did not care," she murmured beneath
his kisses.

He could not speak - for it was a part of his ironic
destiny that he, who was prodigal of light words, should
find himself stricken dumb in any crucial instant.

"You know - you know - " he stammered, holding her closer.

"Then it - it is not all a dream?" she asked.

"I adored you from the first minute - you saw that
- you knew it. I've wanted you day and night since I first
looked at you."

When he went from her a little later, it seemed to him
that all of life had been pressed down into the minute when
he had held her against his breast; and as he walked
through the dimly lighted streets, among the shadows of
men who, like himself, were pursuing some shadowy joy,
he carried with him that strange vision of a heaven on earth
which has haunted mortal eyes since the beginning of love.
Happiness appeared to him as a condition which he had
achieved by a few words, by a kiss, in a minute of time,
but which belonged to him so entirely now that he could
never be defrauded of it again in the future. Whatever
happened to him, he could never be separated from the
bliss of that instant when he had held her.

He was going to Cyrus while his ecstasy ennobled even
the prosaic fact of the railroad. And just as on that other
evening, when he had rushed in anger away

from the house of his uncle, so now he was exalted by the
consciousness that he was following the lead of the more
spiritual part of his nature - for the line of least resistance
was so overgrown with exquisite impressions that he no
longer recognized it. The sacrifice of art for love
appeared to him to-day as splendidly romantic
as the sacrifice of comfort for art had seemed to him a few
months ago. His desire controlled him so absolutely that
he obeyed its different promptings under the belief that he
was obeying the principles whose names he borrowed.
The thing he wanted was transmuted by the fire of his
temperament into some artificial likeness to the thing that
was good for him.

On the front steps, between the two pink oleanders,
Cyrus was standing with his gaze fixed on a small grocery
store across the street, and at the sight of his nephew a
look of curiosity, which was as personal an emotion as he
was in the habit of feeling, appeared on his lean yellow
face. Behind him, the door into the hall stood open, and
his stooping figure was outlined against the light of the
gas-jet by the staircase.

"You see I've come," said Oliver; for Cyrus, who never
spoke first unless he was sure of dominating the situation,
had waited for him to begin.

"Yes, I see," replied the old man, not unkindly. "I
expected you, but hardly so soon - hardly so soon."

"It's about the place on the railroad. If you are still of the
same mind, I'd like you to give me a trial."

"When would you want to start?"

"The sooner the better. I'd rather get settled there
before the autumn. I'm going to be married sometime in
the autumn - October, perhaps."

"She's Virginia Pendleton. You know her, of course."
He tried honestly to be natural, but in spite of himself he
could not keep a note of constraint out of his voice. Merely
to discuss Virginia with Cyrus seemed, in some subtle way,
an affront to her. Yet he knew that the old man wanted to
be kind, and the knowledge touched him.

"Oh, yes, I know her. She's a good girl, and there
doesn't live a better man than Gabriel."

"I don't deserve her, of course. But, then, there never
lived a man who deserved an angel."

"Ain't you coming in?" asked Cyrus.

"Not this evening. I only wanted to speak to you. I
suppose I'd better go down to the office to-morrow and
talk to Mr. Burden, hadn't I?"

"Come about noon, and I'll tell him to expect you. Well,
if you ain't coming in, I reckon I'll close this door."

Looking up a minute later from the pavement Oliver
saw his aunt rocking slowly back and forth at the window
of her room, and the remembrance of her fell like a blight
over his happiness.

By the time he reached High Street a wind had risen
beyond the hill near the river, and the scattered papers on
the pavement fled like grey wings before him into the
darkness. As the air freshened, faces appeared in the
doors along the way, and the whole town seemed

drinking in the cooling breeze as if it were water. On the
wind sped, blowing over the slack figure of Mrs.
Treadwell; blowing over the conquering smile of Susan,
who was unbinding her long hair; blowing over the
joy-brightened eyes of Virginia, who dreamed in the starlight
of the life that would come to her; blowing over the
ghost-haunted face of her mother, who dreamed of the life that
had gone by her; blowing at last, beyond the river, over the
tired hands of the little seamstress, who dreamed of nothing
except of how she might keep her living body out of the
poorhouse and her dead body out of the potter's field. And
over the town, with its twenty-one thousand souls, each of
whom contained within itself a separate universe of tragedy
and of joy, of hope and of disappointment, the wind passed
as lightly it passed over the unquiet dust in the streets
below.

BOOK II
THE REALITY

CHAPTER I
VIRGINIA PREPARES FOR THE FUTURE
"MOTHER, I'm so
happy! Oh! was there ever a girl so
happy as I am?"

"I was, dear, once."

"When you married father? Yes, I know," said Virginia,
but she said it without conviction. In her heart she did not
believe that marrying her father - perfect old darling that
he was! - could ever have caused any girl just the
particular kind of ecstasy that she was feeling. She even
doubted whether such stainless happiness had ever before
visited a mortal upon this planet. It was not only
wonderful, it was not only perfect, but it felt so absolutely
new that she secretly cherished the belief that it had been
invented by the universe especially for Oliver and herself. It was
ridiculous to imagine that the many million pairs of lovers
that were marrying every instant had each experienced a
miracle like this, and yet left the earth pretty much as they
had found it before they fell in love.

It was a week before her wedding, and she stood in the
centre of the spare room in the west wing, which had been
turned over to Miss Willy Whitlow. The little seamstress
knelt now at her feet, pinning up the hem of a black silk
polonaise, and turning her head from time to time to ask
Mrs. Pendleton if

she was "getting the proper length." For a quarter of a
century, no girl of Virginia's class had married in Dinwiddie
without the crowning benediction of a black silk gown, and
ever since the announcement of Virginia's betrothal her
mother had cramped her small economies in order that she
might buy "grosgrain" of the best quality.

"Is that right, mother? Do you think I might curve it a
little more in front?" asked the girl, holding her feet still with
difficulty because she felt that she wanted to dance.

"No, dear, I think it will stay in fashion longer if you
don't shorten it. Then it will be easier to make over the
more goods you leave in it."

"It looks nice on me, doesn't it?" Standing there, with
the stiff silk slipping away from her thin shoulders, and the
dappled sunlight falling over her neck and arms through the
tawny leaves of the paulownia tree in the garden, she was
like a slim white lily unfolding softly out of its sheath.

"Lovely, darling, and it will be so useful. I got the very
best quality, and it ought to wear forever."

"I made Mrs. William Goode one ten years ago, and
she's still wearing it," remarked Miss Willy, speaking with
an effort through a mouthful of pins.

A machine, which had been whirring briskly by the side
window, stopped suddenly, and the girl who sewed
there - a sickly, sallow-faced creature of Virginia's age,
who was hired by Mrs. Pendleton, partly out of charity
because she supported an invalid father who had been
crippled in the war, and partly because, having little
strength and being an unskilled worker, her price was
cheap - turned for an instant and stared

wistfully at the black silk polonaise over the strip of
organdie which she was hemming. All her life she had
wanted a black silk dress, and though she knew that she
should probably never have one, and should not have time
to wear it if she ever had, she liked to linger over the
thought of it, very much as Virginia lingered over the
thought of her lover, or as little Miss Willy lingered over the
thought of having a tombstone over her after she was dead.
In the girl's face, where at first there had been only
admiration, a change came gradually. A quiver, so faint that
it was hardly more than a shadow, passed over her drawn
features, and her gaze left the trailing yards of silk and
wandered to the blue October sky over the swinging
leaves of the paulownia. But instead of the radiant autumn
weather at which she was looking, she still saw that black
silk polonaise which she wanted as she wanted youth and
pleasure, and which she knew that she should never have.

"Everything is finished but this, isn't it, Miss Willy?"
asked Virginia, and at the sound of her happy voice, that
strange quiver passed again through the other girl's face.

"Everything except that organdie and a couple of
nightgowns." There was no quiver in Miss Willy's face, for
from constant consideration of the poorhouse and the
cemetery, she had come to regard the other problems of
life, if not with indifference, at least with something
approaching a mild contempt. Even love, when measured
by poverty or by death, seemed to lose the impressiveness
of its proportions.

"And I'll have enough clothes to last me for years, shan't
I, mother?"

"I hope so, darling. Your father and I have done the
best that we could for you."

"You've been angels. Oh, how I shall hate to leave you!"

"If only you weren't going away, Jinny!" Then she broke
down, and dropping the tomato-shaped pincushion she
had been holding, she slipped from the room, while
Virginia thrust the polonaise into Miss Willy's hands and
fled breathlessly after her.

In the girl's room, with her head bowed on the top of the
little bookcase, above those thin rows of fiction, Mrs.
Pendleton was weeping almost wildly over the coming
separation. She, who had not thought of herself for thirty
years, had suddenly broken the constraint of the long habit.
Yet it was characteristic of her, that even now her first
feeling, when Virginia found her, should be one of shame
that she had clouded for an instant the girl's happiness.

"It is nothing, darling. I have a little headache, and - oh,
Jinny! Jinny!"

"Mother, it won't be long. We are coming back to live
just as soon as Oliver can get work. It isn't as if I were
going for good, is it? And I'll write you every day - every
single day. Mother, dearest, darling mother, I can't stay
away from you - "

Then Virginia wept, too, and Mrs. Pendleton, forgetting
her own sorrow at sight of the girl's tears, began to
comfort her.

"Of course, you'll write and tell me everything. It will be
almost as if I were with you."

"And you love Oliver, don't you, mother?"

"How could I help it, dear - only I can't quite get used
to your calling your husband by his name, Jinny.

It would have horrified your grandmother, and somehow it
does seem lacking in respect. However, I suppose I'm
old-fashioned."

"But, mother, he laughs if I call him 'Mr. Treadwell.' He
says it reminds him of his Aunt Belinda."

"Perhaps he's right, darling. Anyway, he prefers it, and I
fancy your grandfather wouldn't have liked to hear his wife
address him so familiarly. Times have changed since my
girlhood."

"And Oliver has lived out in the world so much mother."

"Yes," said Mrs. Pendleton, but her voice was without
enthusiasm. The "world" to her was a vague and sinister
shape, which looked like a bubble, and exerted a malignant
influence over those persons who lived beyond the borders
of Virginia. Her imagination, which seldom wandered
farther afield than the possibility of the rector or of Virginia
falling ill, or the dreaded likelihood that her market bills
would overrun her weekly allowance, was incapable of
grasping a set of standards other than the one which was
accepted in Dinwiddie.

"Wherever you are, Jinny, I hope that you will never
forget the ideas your father and I have tried to implant in
you," she said.

"I'll always try to be worthy of you, mother."

"Your first duty now, of course, is to your husband.
Remember, we have always taught you that a woman's
strength lies in her gentleness. His will must be yours now,
and wherever your ideas cross, it is your duty to give up,
darling. It is the woman's part to sacrifice herself."

"I have never forgotten this, dear, and my marriage has
been very happy. Of course," she added, while her
forehead wrinkled nervously, "there are not many men like
your father."

"Of course not, mother, but Oliver - "

In Mrs. Pendleton's soft, anxious eyes the shadow
darkened, as if for the first time she had grown suspicious
of the traditional wisdom which she was imparting. But this
suspicion was so new and young that it could not struggle
for existence against the archaic roots of her inherited
belief in the Pauline measure of her sex. It was
characteristic of her - and indeed of most women of her
generation - that she would have endured martyrdom in
support of the consecrated doctrine of her inferiority to
man.

"Even in the matter of religion you ought to yield to him,
darling," she said after a moment in which she had
appealed to that orthodox arbiter, her conscience. "Your
father and I were talking about what church you should go
to, and I said that I supposed Oliver was a Presbyterian,
like all of the Treadwells."

"Oh, mother, I didn't tell you before because I hoped I
could change him - but he doesn't go to any church - he
says they all bore him equally. He has broken away from
all the old ideas, you know. He is dreadfully - unsettled."

The anxiety, which had been until then merely a shadow
in Mrs. Pendleton's eyes, deepened into a positive pain.

"Your father must have known, for he talked to
him - but he wouldn't tell me," she said.

"If he has given up the old spiritual standards, what has
he in place of them?" asked Mrs. Pendleton, and she had
suddenly a queer feeling as if little fine needles were
pricking her skin.

"I don't know, but he seems to have a great deal, more
than any of us," answered Virginia, and she added
passionately, "He is good, mother."

"I never doubted it, darling, but he is young, and his
character cannot be entirely formed at his age. A man must
be very strong in order to be good without faith."

"But he has faith, mother - of some kind."

"I am not judging him, my child, and neither your father
nor I would ever criticise your husband to you. Your
happiness was set on him, and we can only pray from our
hearts that he will prove worthy of your love. He is very
lovable, and I am sure that he has fine, generous traits.
Your father has been completely won over by him."

"He likes me to be religious, mother. He says the church
has cultivated the loveliest type of woman the world has
ever seen."

"Then by fulfilling that ideal you will please him best."

"I shall try to be just what you have been to father
- just as unselfish, just as devoted."

"I have made many mistakes, Jinny, but I don't think I
have ever failed in love - not in love, at least."

Then the pain passed out of her eyes, and because it
was impossible for her to look on any fact in life

except through the transfiguring idealism with which the
ages had endowed her, she became immediately convinced
that everything, even the unsettling of Oliver's opinions, had
been arranged for the best. This assurance was the more
solacing because it was the result, not of external evidence,
but of that instinctive decision of temperament which
breeds the deepest conviction of all.

"Love is the only thing that really matters, isn't it,
mother?"

"A pure and noble love, darling. It is a woman's life.
God meant it so."

"You are so good! If I can only be half as good as you
are."

"No, Jinny, I'm not really good. I have had many
temptations - for I was born with a high temper, and it has
taken me a lifetime to learn really to subdue it. I had - I
have still an unfortunate pride. But for your father's daily
example of humility and patience, I don't know how I
could have supported the trials and afflictions we have
known. Pray to be better than your mother, my child, if
you want to become a perfect wife. What I am that seems
good to you, your father has made me "

"And father says that he would have been a savage but
for you."

A tremor passed through Mrs. Pendleton's thin bosom,
and bending over, she smoothed a fine darn in the skirt of
her alpaca dress.

"We have loved each other," she answered. "If you and
Oliver love as much, you will be happy whatever comes to
you." Then choking down the hard lump in her throat, she
took up her leather key basket

from the little table beside the bed, and moved slowly
towards the door. "I must see about supper now, dear,"
she said in her usual voice of quiet cheerfulness.

Left to herself, Virginia opened the worn copy of the
prayer-book, which she kept at her bedside, and read the
marriage service from beginning to end, as she had done
every day since her engagement to Oliver. The words
seemed to her, as they seemed to her mother, to be almost
divine in their nobility and beauty. She was troubled by no
doubt as to the inspired propriety of the canonical vision of
woman. What could be more beautiful or more sacred than
to be "given" to Oliver - to belong to him as utterly as she
had belonged to her father? What could make her happier
than the knowledge that she must surrender her will to his
from the day of her wedding until the day of her death? She
embraced her circumscribed lot with a passion which glorified its
limitations. The single gift which the ages permitted her was
the only one she desired. Her soul craved no adventure
beyond the permissible adventure of being sought in
marriage. Love was all that she asked of a universe that
was overflowing with manifold aspects of life.

Beyond the window the tawny leaves of the paulownia
were swinging in the October sunshine, and so gay they
seemed that it was impossible to imagine them insensible to
the splendour of the Indian Summer. Under the half bared
boughs, on the green grass in the yard, those that had
already fallen sped on, like a flock of frightened brown
birds, towards the white paling fence of the churchyard.

While she sat there, with her prayer-book in her hand,
and her eyes on the purple veil of the distance, it

seemed to her that her joy was so complete that there was
nothing left even to hope for. All her life she had looked
forward to the coming of what she thought of vaguely as
"happiness," and now that it was here, she felt that it put an
end to the tremulous expectancy which had filled her girlhood with
such wistful dreams. Marriage appeared to her (and indeed to Oliver,
also) as a miraculous event, which would make not only
herself, but every side of life, different for the future. After
that there would be no vain longings, no spring restlessness,
no hours of drab weariness, when the interests of living
seemed to crumble from mere despondency. After that they
would be always happy, always eager, always buoyantly
alive.

Leaving the marriage service, her thoughts brooded in a
radiant stillness on the life of love which would begin for
her on the day of her wedding. A strange light - the light
that quivered like a golden wing over the autumn
fields - shone, also, into the secret chambers of her soul,
and illumined the things which had appeared merely dull
and commonplace until to-day. Those innumerable little
cares which fill the lives of most women were steeped in
the magic glow of this miraculous charm. She thought of
the daily excitement of marketing, of the perpetual
romance of mending his clothes, of the glorified monotony
of pouring his coffee, as an adventurer on sunrise seas
might dream of the rosy islands of hidden treasure. And
then, so perfectly did she conform in spirit to the classic
ideal of her sex, her imagination ecstatically pictured her in
the immemorial attitude of woman. She saw herself
waiting - waiting happily - but always waiting.

She imagined the thrilling expectancy of the morning
waiting for him to come home to his dinner; the hushed
expectancy of the evening waiting for him to come home to
his supper; the blissful expectancy of hoping that he might
be early; the painful expectancy of fearing that he might be
late. And it seemed to her divinely right and beautiful that,
while he should have a hundred other absorbing interests in
his life, her whole existence should perpetually circle around
this single centre of thought. One by one, she lived in
anticipation all the exquisite details of their life together, and
in imagining them, she overlooked all possible changes that
the years might bring, as entirely as she ignored the subtle
variations of temperament which produce in each individual
that fluid quantity we call character. She thought of Oliver,
as she thought of herself, as though, the fact of marriage
would crystallize him into a shape from which he would
never alter or dissolve in the future. And with a reticence
peculiar to her type, she never once permitted her mind to
stray to her crowning beatitude - the hope of a child; for,
with that sacred inconsistency possible only to fixed beliefs,
though motherhood was supposed to comprise every
desire, adventure, and activity in the life of woman, it was
considered indelicate for her to dwell upon the thought of it
until the condition had become too obvious for refinement
to deny.

The shadow of the church tower lengthened on the
grass, and at the end of the cross street she saw Susan
appear and stop for a minute to speak to Miss Priscilla,
who was driving by in a small wagonette. Then the
girl and the teacher parted, and ten minutes later

"Miss Willy told mother that your wedding dress was
finished, Jinny, and I am dying to see it!"

Going to the closet, which was built into one corner of
the wall, Virginia unpinned a long white sheet scented with
rose-leaves, and brought out a filmy mass of satin and
lace. Her face as she looked down upon it was the face of
girlhood incarnate. All her virginal dreams clustered there
like doves quivering for flight. Its beauty was the beauty of
fleeting things - of the wind in the apple blossoms at dawn,
of the music of bees on an August afternoon.

"Mother wouldn't let me be married in anything but
satin," she said, with a catch in her voice. "I believe it is the
first time in her life she was ever extravagant, but she felt
so strongly about it that I had to give in and not have white
muslin as I wanted to do."

"And it's so lovely," said Susan. "I had no idea Miss
Willy could do it. She's as proud, too, as if it were her
own."

"She took a pleasure in every stitch, she told me. Oh,
Susan, I sometimes feel that I haven't any right to be so
happy. I seem to have everything and other women to
have nothing."

For the first time Susan smiled, but it was a smile of
understanding. "Perhaps they have more than you think,
darling."

"But there's Miss Willy - what has she ever got out of
life?"

"Well, I really believe she gets a kind of happiness out
of saving up the money to pay for her tombstone.

It's a funny thing, but the people who ought to be unhappy,
somehow never are. It doesn't seem to be a matter of
what you have, but of the way you are born. Now,
according to us, Miss Willy ought to be miserable, but the
truth is that she isn't a bit so. Mother saw her once
skipping for pure joy in the spring."

"But people who haven't things can't be as grateful to
God as those who have. I feel that I'd like to spend every
minute of my life on my knees thanking Him. I don't see
how I can ever have a disappointed or a selfish thought
again. I wonder if you can understand, you precious
Susan, but I want to open my arms and take the whole
world into them."

"Jinny," said Susan suddenly, "don't spoil Oliver."

"I couldn't - not if I tried every minute."

"I don't know, dear. He is very lovable, he has fine
generous traits, he has the making of a big man in
him - but his character isn't formed yet, you must
remember. So much of him is imagination that he will take
longer than most men to grow up to his stature."

"Oh, Susan!" exclaimed Virginia, and turned away.

"Perhaps I oughtn't to have said it, Jinny - but, no, I
ought to tell you just what I think, and I don't regret it."

"Mother said the same thing to me," responded Virginia,
looking as if she were on the point of tears; "but that is just
because neither of you know him as I do."

"He is a Treadwell and so am I, and the chief
characteristic of every Treadwell is that he is going to get
the thing he wants most. It doesn't make any

difference whether it is money or love or fame, the thing he
wants most he will get sooner or later. So all I mean is that
you needn't spoil Oliver by giving him the universe before
he wants it."

"I can't give him the universe. I can only give him
myself."

Stooping over, Susan kissed her.

"Happy, happy little Jinny!"

"There are only two things that trouble me, dear - one
is going away from mother and father, and the other is that
you are not so happy as I am."

"Some day I may get the thing I want like every other
Treadwell."

"Do you mean going to college?"

"No," said Susan, "I don't mean that," and into her calm
grey eyes a new light shone for an instant.

A clairvoyance, deeper than knowledge, came to
Virginia while she looked at her.

"You darling!" she exclaimed. "I never suspected!"

"There's nothing to suspect, Jinny. I was only joking."

"Why, it never crossed my mind that you would think of
him for a minute."

"He hasn't thought of me for a minute yet."

"The idea! He'd be wild about you in ten seconds if he
ever thought - "

"He was wild about you ten seconds ago, dear."

"He never was. It was just his fancy. Why, you are
made for each other."

A laugh broke from Susan, but with that large and quiet
candour which was characteristic of her, she did not seek
to evade or deny Virginia's suspicion. That her friend
should discover her feeling for John Henry

seemed to her as natural as that she should be conscious of
it herself - for they were intimate with that full and perfect
intimacy which exists only between two women who trust each other.

"There goes Miss Willy," said Susan, looking through the
window to where the little dressmaker tripped down the
stone steps to the street. "Mother wants to have early
supper, so I must be running away."

"Good-bye, darling. Oh, Susan, I never loved you as I
do now. It will be all right - I trust and pray that it will!
And, just think, you will walk out of church together at my
wedding!"

For a minute, standing on the threshold, Susan looked
back at her with an expression of tender amusement in her
eyes. "Don't imagine that I'm unhappy, dear," she said, "because
I'm not - it isn't that kind - and, after all, even an unrequited
affection may be simply an added interest in life, if we choose to
take it that way."

When she had gone, Virginia lingered over her wedding
dress, while she wondered what the wise Susan could see
in the simple John Henry? Was it possible that John Henry
was not so simple, after all? Or did Susan, forsaking the
ancient tradition of love, care about him merely because he
was good?

For a week the hours flew by with golden wings, and at
last the most sacred day of her life dawned softly in a
sunrise of rose and flame. When she looked back on it
afterwards, there were three things which stood out
unforgettably in her memory - the kiss that her mother
gave her when she turned to leave her girlhood's room for
the last time; the sound of her father's voice as he spoke
her name at the altar; and

the look in Oliver's eyes when she put her hand into his.
All the rest was enveloped in a shining mist which floated,
like her wedding veil, between the old life and the new.

"It has been so perfect - so perfect - if I can only be
worthy of this day and of you, Oliver," she said as the
carriage started from the rectory gate to the station.

"You angel!" he murmured ecstatically.

Her eyes hung blissfully on his face for an instant, and
then, moved by a sudden stab of reproach, she leaned
from the window and looked back at her mother and
father, who stood, with clasped hands, gazing after her
over the white palings of the gate.

CHAPTER II
VIRGINIA'S LETTERS

MATOACA CITY, West Virginia, October 16, 1884.

DEAREST, DEAREST MOTHER:

We got here this
morning after a dreadful trip - nine or
ten hours late - and this is the first minute I've had when I
could sit down and write to you. All the way on the train I
was thinking of you and dear father, and longing for you so
that I could hardly keep back the tears. I don't see how I
can possibly stay away from you for a whole year. Oliver
says he wants to take me home for Christmas if everything
goes all right with us here and his work proves satisfactory
to the manager. Oh, mother, he is the loveliest thing to me!
I don't believe he has thought of himself a single minute
since I married him. He says the only wish he has on earth
is to make me happy - and he is so careful about me that
I'm afraid I'll be spoiled to death before you see me again.
He says he loves the little grey dress of shot silk, with the
bonnet that makes me look like a Quaker. I wish now I'd
got my other hat the bonnet shape as you wanted me to
do - but perhaps, after all, it will be more useful and keep
in fashion longer as it is. When I took out my clothes this
morning, while Oliver was downstairs, and remembered
how you had folded and packed everything, I just sat
down on the floor in

the midst of them and had a good cry. I never realized how
much I loved you until I got into the carriage to come away.
Then I wanted to jump out and put my arms around you
and tell you that you are the best and dearest mother a girl
ever had. My things were so beautifully packed that there
wasn't a single crease anywhere - not even in the black silk
polonaise that we were so afraid would get rumpled. I
don't see how on earth you folded them so smoothly. By
the way, I hardly think I shall have any need of my wedding
dress while I am here, so you may as well put it away at
home until I come back. This place seems to be just a
mining town, with very few people of our class, and those
all connected with the railroad. Of course, I may be
mistaken, but from my first impressions I doubt if I'll ever
want to have much to do with anybody that I've seen. It
doesn't make a bit of difference, of course, because I shan't
be lonesome a minute with the house to look after and
Oliver's clothes to attend to; and, besides, I don't think a
married woman ought to make many new friends. Her
husband ought to be enough for her. Mrs. Payson, the
manager's wife, was here to welcome me, but I hope I
shan't see very much of her, because she isn't just exactly
what I should call ladylike. Of course I wouldn't breathe
this to any other living soul, but I thought her entirely too
free and easy in her manner, and she dresses in such very
bright colours. Why, she had a red feather in her hat, and
she must have been married at least fifteen years. Oliver
says he doesn't believe she's a day under forty-five. He
says he likes her well enough and thinks she's a good sort,
but he is awfully glad that I'm not that kind of

woman. I feel sorry for her husband, for I'm sure no man
wants his wife to make herself conspicuous, and they say
she even makes speeches when she is in the North.
Maybe she isn't to blame, because she was brought up
that way, but I am going to see just as little of her as I can.

And now I must tell you about our house, for I know you
are dying to hear how we are fixed. It's the tiniest one you
ever imagined, with a front yard the size of a pocket
handkerchief, and it is painted the most perfectly hideous
shade of yellow - the shade father always calls bilious. I
can't understand why they made it so ugly, but, then, the
whole town is just as ugly as our house is. The people here
don't seem to have the least bit of taste. All the porches
have dreadful brown ornaments along the top of them and
they look exactly as if they were made out of gingerbread.
There are very few gardens, and nobody takes any care of
these. I suppose one reason is that it is almost impossible to
get servants for love or money. There are hardly any
darkies here, they say, and the few they have are perfectly
worthless. Mrs. Midden - the woman who opened my
house for me - hasn't been able to get me a cook, and
we'll either have to take our meals at a boarding-house
across the street, or I shall have to put to practice the
lessons you gave me. I am so glad you made me learn how
to housekeep and to cook, because I am certain that I shall
have greater need of both of these accomplishments than of
either drawing or music. Oliver was simply horrified when
I told him so. He said he'd rather starve than see me in the
kitchen, and he urged me to get you to send us a servant
from Dinwiddie -

but things are so terribly costly here - you never dreamed
of such prices - that I really don't believe we can afford to
have one come. Then, Mrs. Midden says that they get
ruined just as soon as they are brought here. Everybody
tries it at first, she told me, and it has always proved a
disappointment in the end. I am perfectly sure that I shan't
mind cooking at all - and as for cleaning up this little
house - why, it won't take me an hour - but Oliver almost
weeps every time I mention it. He is afraid every instant he
is away from me that I am lonesome or something has
happened to me, and whenever he has ten minutes free he
runs up here to see what I am doing. Do you know he has
made me promise not to go out by myself until I am used to
the place. Isn't that too absurd?

Dearest mother, I must stop now, and write some notes
of thanks for my presents. The barrels of china haven't
come yet, but the silver box got here almost as soon as we
did. Freight takes a long time, Oliver says. It will be such
fun unpacking all my presents and putting them away on
the shelves. I was so excited those last few days that I
hardly paid any attention to the things that came. Now I
shall have time really to enjoy them, and to realize how
sweet and lovely everybody has been to me. Wasn't it too
dear of Miss Priscilla to give me that beautiful tea-set? And
I was so touched by poor little Miss Willy spending her
hard-earned money on that vase. I wish she hadn't. It
makes me feel badly to think of it - but I don't see what I
could do about it, do you? I think I'll try to send her a
cloak or something at Christmas.

I haven't said half that I want to but I shall keep the rest
for to-morrow.

It almost broke my
heart not to be able to go home for
Christmas. It doesn't seem like Christmas at all away from
You - though, of course, I try not to let Oliver see how I
mind it. He has so much to bother him, poor dear, that I
keep all of my worries, big and little, in the background.
When anything goes wrong in the house I never tell him,
because he has so many important things on his mind that I
don't think I ought to trouble him about small ones. We
have given up going to the boarding-house for our meals,
because neither of us could eat a morsel of the food they
had there - did you ever hear of such a thing as having pie
and preserves for breakfast? - and Oliver says it used to
make him sick to see me in the midst of all of those people.
They came from all over the country, and hardly anybody
could speak a grammatical sentence. The man who sat next
to me always said "he don't" and "I ain't feeling good to-day"
and once even "I done it" - can you imagine such a
thing? Every other word was guess, and yet they had the
impertinence to laugh at me when I said "reckon," which, I
am sure father told me was Shakespearian English. Well,
we stood it as long as we could, and then we started having
our meals here, and it is so much nicer. Oliver says the
change from the boarding-house has given him a splendid
appetite, and he enjoys everything that I make

so much - particularly the waffles by Aunt Ailsey's recipe.
Be sure to tell her. At first I had a servant, but she was so
dreadful that I let her go at the end of the month, and I
really get on ever so much better without her. She hadn't
the faintest idea how to cook, and had never made a piece
of light bread in her life. Besides, she was too untidy for
anything, and actually swept the trash under the bed except
once a week when she pretended to give a thorough
cleaning. The first time she changed the sheets, I found that
she had simply put on one fresh one, and was going to use
the bottom one on top. She said she'd never heard of doing
it any other way, and I had to laugh when I thought of how
your face would have looked if you could have heard her.
It really is the greatest relief to get rid of her, and I'd a
hundred times rather do the work myself than have another
of that kind. At first Oliver hated dreadfully to have me do
everything about the house, but he is beginning to get used
to it now, because, of course, I never let him see if anything
happens to worry me or if I am tired when he comes home.
It takes every minute of my time, but, then, there is nothing
else here that I care to do, and I never leave the house
except to take a little walk with Oliver on Sunday
afternoon. Mrs. Midden says that I make a mistake to give
a spring cleaning every day, but I love to keep the house
looking perfectly spick and span, and I make hot bread
twice a day, because Oliver is so fond of it. He is just as
sweet and dear as he can be and wants to help about
everything, but I hate to see him doing housework.
Somehow it doesn't seem to me to look manly. We have
had our first quarrel about who is

to get up and make the fires in the morning. Oliver insisted
that he was to do it, but I wake so much earlier than he
does, because I've got the bread on my mind, that I almost
always have the wood burning before he gets up. The first
few times he was really angry about it, and he didn't seem
to understand why I hated so to wake him. He says he
hates still worse to see my hands get rough - but I am so
thankful that I am not one of those girls (like Abby Goode)
who are forever thinking of how they look. But Oliver
made such a fuss about the fires that I didn't tell him that I
went down to the cellar one morning and brought up a
basket of coal. The boy didn't come the day before, so
there wasn't any to start the kitchen fire with, and I knew
that by the time Oliver got up and dressed it would be too
late to have hot rolls for breakfast. By the way, could you
have a bushel of cornmeal sent to me from Dinwiddie? The
kind they have here isn't the least bit like the water-ground
sort we have at home, and most of it is yellow. Nobody
ever has batterbread here. All the food is different from
ours. I suppose that is because most of the people are from
the North and West.

I have the table all set for our Christmas dinner, and in a
few minutes I must put the turkey into the oven. I was so
glad to get the plum pudding in the Christmas box, because
I could never have made one half so good as yours, and the
fruit cake will last me forever - it is so big. I wrote you
about the box yesterday just as soon as it came, but after I
had sent my letter, I went back to it and found that rose
point scarf of grandmother's wrapped in tissue paper in the

bottom. Darling mother, it made me cry. You oughtn't to
have given it to me. It always looked so lovely on your
black silk, and it was almost the last thing you had left. I
don't believe I shall ever make up my mind to wear it. I
have on my little grey silk to-day, and it looks so nice. You
must tell Miss Willy that it has been very much admired.
Mrs. Payson asked me if it was made in Dinwiddie, and,
you know, she gets all of her clothes from New
York. That must have been why I thought her overdressed
when I first saw her. By the way, I've almost changed my
mind about her since I wrote you what I thought of her. I
believe now that the whole trouble with her is simply that
she isn't a Southern lady. She means well, I am sure, but
she isn't what I should call exactly refined. There's
something "horsey" about her - I can't think of any other
way to express it - something that reminds me just a little
bit of Abby - and, you remember, we always said Abby
got that from being educated in the North. Tell dearest
Susan I really think it is fortunate that she did not go to one
of their colleges. Mrs. Payson is a college woman and it
seems to me that she is always trying to appear as clever as
a man. She talks in a way sometimes that sounds as if she
believed in woman's rights and all that sort of thing. I told
Oliver about it, and he laughed and said that men hated talk
like that. He says all a man admires in a woman is her
power of loving, and that when she begins to ape a man
she loses her charm for him. I can't understand why Mr.
Payson married his wife. He said such nice things to me
the other day about my being so domestic and such a home
lover, that I really felt sorry for him. When I told

him that I was so fond of staying indoors that I would never
cross my threshold if Oliver didn't make me, he laughed and
said that he wished I'd convert his wife to my way of
thinking. Yet he seems to have the greatest admiration for
her, and, do you know, I believe he even admires that red
feather, though he doesn't approve of it. He never turns his
eyes away from her when they are together, which isn't very
much, as she goes about just as she pleases without him.
Can you understand how a person can both admire and
disapprove of a thing? Oliver says he knows how it is, but I
must say that I don't. I hope and pray that our marriage will
always be different from theirs. Oliver and I are never apart
for a single minute except when he is at work in the office.
He hasn't written a line since we came here, but he is going
to begin as soon as we get settled, and then he says that I
may sit in the room and sew if I want to. I can't believe that
people really love each other unless they want to be together
every instant no matter what they are doing. Why, if Oliver
went out to men's dinners without me as Mr. Payson does
(though she doesn't seem to mind it) I should just sit at home
by myself and cry my eyes out. I think love, if it is love,
ought to be all in all. I am perfectly sure that if I live to be a
hundred I shall never want any society but Oliver's. He is the
whole world to me, and when he is not here I spend my
time, unless I am at work, just sitting and thinking about him.
My one idea is to make him as happy as I can, and when a
woman does this for a man I don't think she has time to run
around by herself as Mrs. Payson does. Tell dearest father
that I so often think of his sermons and the beautiful

things he said about women. The rector here doesn't
compare with him as a preacher.

This is such a long
letter it will take two stamps. I've just
let myself run on without thinking what I was writing, so if I
have made any mistakes in grammar or in spelling, please
don't let father see them but read my letter aloud to him. I
can shut my eyes and see you sitting at dinner, with Docia
bringing in the plum pudding, and I know you will talk of
me while you help to it. Write me who comes to dinner
with you. I wonder if Miss Priscilla and John Henry are
there as usual. Do you know whether John Henry ever
goes to the Treadwell's or not? I wish you would ask him
to take Susan to see his old mammy in Fink Alley. Now
that I am not there to go to see her occasionally, I am
afraid she will get lonesome.

Good-bye, dearest mother.
I will write to you before
New Year. I am so busy that I don't have time to write
every day, but you will understand and so will father.

With my heart's fondest love to you both,

Your
VIRGINIA.

MATOACA CITY. June 6, 1885.

DARLING MOTHER:

The little patterns
were exactly what I wanted - thank
you a thousand times. I knew you would be overjoyed at
the news, and you are the only person I've breathed it
to - except, of course, dear Oliver, who is frightened to
death already. He has made me stop everything at once,
and whenever he sees me lift my hand, he begins to get
nervous and begs me not to do it.

Oh, mother, he loves me so that it is really pathetic to see
his anxiety. And - can you believe it - he doesn't appear
to be the least bit glad about it. When I told him, he
looked amazed - as if he had never thought of its
happening - and said, "Oh, Virginia, not so soon!" He told
me afterwards that, of course, he'd always thought we'd
have children after a while, before we were middle-aged,
but that he had wanted to stay like this for at least five or
ten years. When the baby comes, he says he supposes
he'll like it, but that he can't honestly say he is glad. It's
funny how frightened he is, because I am not the least bit
so. All women must expect to have children when they
marry, and if God makes them suffer for it, it must be
because it is best that they should. Perhaps they wouldn't
love their babies so much if they got them easily. I never
think of the pain a minute. It all seems so beautiful and
sacred to me that I can't understand why Oliver isn't
enraptured just as I am. To think of a new life starting into
the world from me - a life that is half mine and half
Oliver's, and one that would never be at all except for our
love. The baby will seem from the very first minute to be
our love made into flesh. I don't see how a woman who
feels this could waste a thought on what she has to suffer.

I am so glad you are going to send me a nurse from
Dinwiddie, because I'm afraid I could never get one here
that I could trust. The servant Oliver got me is no earthly
account, and I still do as much of the cooking as I can.
The house doesn't look nearly so nice as it used to, but the
doctor tells me that I mustn't sweep, so I only do the light
dusting. I sew almost all the time, and I've already finished
the little slips. To-day I'm

going to cut out the petticoats. I couldn't tell from the
pattern you sent whether they fasten in front or in the back.
There are no places for buttonholes. Do you use safety
pins to fasten them with? The embroidery is perfectly
lovely, and will make the sweetest trimming. I am using
pink for the basket because Oliver and I both hope the
baby will be a girl. If it is, I shall name her after you, of
course, and I want her to be just exactly like you. Oliver
says he can't understand why anybody ever wants a
boy - girls are so much nicer. But then he insists that if she
isn't born with blue eyes, he will send her to the orphanage.

I am trying to do just as you tell me to, and to be as
careful as I possibly can. The doctor thinks I've stayed
indoors too much since I came here, so I go out for a little
walk with Oliver every night. I am so afraid that somebody
will see me that I really hate to go out at all, and always
choose the darkest streets I can find. Last night I had a
bad stumble, and Oliver says he doesn't care if the whole
town discovers us, he's not going to take me down any
more unlighted alleys.

It has been terribly hot all day - not a breath of air
Stirring - and I never felt the heat so much in my life. The
doctor says it's because of my condition - and last night,
after Oliver went to sleep, I got up and sat by the window
until daybreak. At first I was dreadfully frightened, and
thought I was going to stifle - but poor Oliver had come
home so tired that I made up my mind I wasn't going to
wake him if I could possibly help it. This morning I didn't
tell him a word about it, and he hasn't the least idea that I
didn't sleep

soundly all night. I suppose that's why I feel so dragged
and worn out to-day, just as if somebody had given me a
good beating. I was obliged to lie down most of the
afternoon, but I am going to take a bath in a few minutes
and try to make myself look nice and fresh before Oliver
comes home. I have let out that flowered organdie - the
one you liked so much - and I wear it almost every
evening. I know I look dreadfully, but Oliver says I am
more beautiful than ever. It seems to me sometimes that
men are born blind where women are concerned, but
perhaps God made it that way on purpose. Do you know
Oliver really admires Mrs. Payson, and he thinks that red
feather very becoming to her. He says she's much too
good for her husband, but I have been obliged to disagree
with him about that. Even if Mr. Payson does drink a little,
I am sure it is only because he gets lonesome when he is
left by himself, and that she could prevent it if she tried.
Oliver and I never talk about these things because he sees
that I feel so strongly about them.

Oh, darling mother, I shall be so glad to see you! I hope
and pray that father will be well enough for you to come a
whole month ahead. In that case you will be here in less
than two months, won't you? If the baby comes on the
twelfth of August, she (I am perfectly sure it will be a girl)
and father will have the same birthday. I am so anxious
that she shall be born on that day.

Well, I must stop now, though I could run on forever. I
never see a living soul from one day to another - Mrs.
Payson is out of town - so when Oliver stays late at the
office, and I am too tired to work, I get a little - just a little
bit lonesome. Mr. Payson sent

me a pile of novels by Oliver the other night - but I haven't
looked into them. I always feel that it is a waste of time to
read when there are things about the house that ought to
be done. I wish everything didn't cost so much here.
Money doesn't go half as far as it does in Dinwiddie. The
price of meat is almost three times as much as it is at home,
and chickens are so expensive that we have them only
twice a week. It is hard to housekeep on a small
allowance, and now that we have to save for the baby's
coming, I have to count every penny. I have bought a little
book like yours, and I put down all that I spend during the
day, and then add it up at night before going to bed. Oliver
says I'm dreadfully frugal, but I am always so terribly afraid
of running over my allowance (which is every cent that we
can afford) and not having the money to pay the doctor's
bills when they are due. Nobody could be more generous
with money than Oliver is - I couldn't endure being
married to a stingy man like Mr. Treadwell - and the other
day when one of the men in the office died, he sent the
most beautiful wreath that cost ten dollars. I am trying to
save enough out of the housekeeping balance to pay for it,
for Oliver always runs out of his pocket money before the
middle of the month. I haven't bought anything for the baby
because you sent me all the materials I needed, and I have
been sewing on those ever since they came. Of course my
own clothes are still as good as new, so the only expense
will be the doctor and the nurse and the extra things I shall
be obliged to have to eat when I am sick.

Just a line to say that
I am so, so sorry you can't come,
but that you mustn't worry a minute, because everything is
going beautifully, and I am not the least bit afraid. The
doctor says he never saw any one in a better frame of
mind or so little nervous. Give my dear love to father. I am
so distressed that he should suffer as he does. Rheumatism
must be such terrible pain, and I don't wonder that you are
frightened lest it should go to his heart. I shall send you a
telegram as soon as the baby comes.

Your devoted daughter,
VIRGINIA.

MATOACA CITY. August 29, 1885.

MY PRECIOUS MOTHER:

This is the first time
I have sat up in bed, and I am trying
to write a little note to you on a pillow instead of a desk.
My hand shakes so that I'm afraid you won't be able to
read it, but I felt that I wanted to send you a few words of
my very own, not dictated to the nurse or to Mrs. Payson.
I can't tell you how perfectly lovely Mrs. Payson has been
to me. She was here all that dreadful night, and I believe I
should have died without her. The doctor said I had such
a hard time because I'd let myself get run down and
stayed indoors too much. But I'm getting all right
now - and the

rest is over and doesn't matter. As soon as I am strong
again I shall be perfectly happy.

Oh, mother, aren't you delighted that the baby is a girl,
after all? It was the first question I asked when I came
back to consciousness the next morning, and when they
told me it was, I said, "Her name is Lucy Pendleton," and
that was all. I was so weak they wouldn't let me open my
lips again, and Oliver was kept out of the room for almost
ten days because I would talk to him. Poor fellow, it
almost killed him. He is as white as a sheet still, and looks
as if he had been through tortures. It must have been
terrible for him, because I was really very, very ill at one
time.

But it is all over now, and the baby is the sweetest thing
you ever imagined. I believe she knows me already, and
Mrs. Payson says she is exactly like me, though I can see
the strongest resemblance to Oliver, even if she has blue
eyes and he hasn't. Wasn't it lovely how everything came
just as we wanted it to - a girl, born on father's birthday,
with blue eyes, and named Lucy? But, mother, darling, the
most wonderful thing of all was that you seemed to be with
me all through it. The whole time I was unconscious I
thought you were here, and the nurse tells me that I was
calling "Mother! Mother!" all that night. Nothing ever made
me feel as close to you as having a baby of my own. I never
knew before what you were to me, and how dearly, dearly
I love you. The nurse is taking the pencil away from me.

the baby at all? He says she caused more trouble than she
is worth. Was father like that?

MATOACA CITY. April 3, 1886.

DEAREST MOTHER:

My last letter was
written an age ago, but I have been so
busy since Marthy left that I've hardly had a moment in
which to draw breath. It was a blow to me that she
wouldn't stay for she was really an excellent nurse and the
baby got on so well with her, but there aren't any coloured
people of her kind here, and she got so homesick for
Dinwiddie that I thought she would lose her mind if she
stayed. You know how dependent they are upon
company, and going out on Sunday afternoon and all that
kind of thing, and there really wasn't any amusement for
her except taking the baby out in the morning. She got so
low spirited that it was almost a relief when she went, but
of course I feel her loss dreadfully. I haven't let the baby
out of my sight because I wouldn't trust Daisy with her for
anything in the world. She is so terribly flighty. I have the
crib brought into my room (though Oliver hates it) and I
take entire charge of her night and day. I should love to do
it if only Oliver didn't mind it so much. He says I think
more of the baby now than I do of him. Isn't that absurd?
But of course she does take every single minute of my
time, and I can't dress myself for him every evening as
carefully as I used to do and look after all the
housekeeping arrangements. Daisy is a very poor cook
and she simply throws the things on the table, but it seems
to me that my first duty is to the baby, so I try to put up
with the discomforts as well as I can. It is hard to eat what
she cooks

since everything tastes exactly alike, but I try to swallow
as much as I can because the doctor says that if I don't
keep up my strength I shall have to stop nursing the baby.
Wouldn't that be dreadful? It almost breaks my heart to
think of it, and I am sure we'd never get any artificial food
to agree with her. She is perfectly well now, the sweetest,
fattest thing you ever saw, and a real beauty, and she is so
devoted to me that she cries whenever I go out of her
sight. I am never tired of watching her, and even when she
is asleep I sit sometimes for an hour by her crib just thinking
how pretty she looks with her eyes closed and wishing
you could see her. Oliver says I spoil her to death, but how
can a baby of seven months be spoiled. He doesn't enjoy
her half as much as I do, and sometimes I almost think that
he gets impatient of seeing her always in my arms. At first
he absolutely refused to have her crib brought into our
room, but when I cried, he gave in and was very sweet
about it. I feel so ashamed sometimes of the way the house
looks, but there doesn't seem to be any help for it because
the doctor says if I let myself get tired it will be bad for the
baby. Of course I wouldn't put my own health before his
comfort, but I am obliged to think first of the baby, am I
not? Last night, for instance, the poor little thing was ill with
colic and I was up and down with her until daybreak. Then
this morning she woke early and I had to nurse her and
give her her bath, and, added to everything else, Daisy's
cousin died and she sent word she couldn't come. I slipped
on a wrapper before taking a bath or fixing my hair and ran
down to try and get Oliver's breakfast, but the baby began
to cry and he came after me and said he wanted to make
the coffee

himself. Then he brought a cup upstairs to me, but I was
so tired and nervous that I couldn't drink it. He didn't seem
to understand why, feeling as badly as I did, I wouldn't
just put the baby back into her crib and make her stay
there until I got some rest, but the little thing was so wide
awake that I hadn't the heart to do it. Besides, it is so
important to keep regular hours with her, isn't it? I don't
suppose a man ever realizes how a woman looks at these
things, but you will understand, won't you, mother?

I am all alone in the house to-night because a play is in
town that Oliver wanted to see and I made him go to it.
He wanted to ask Mrs. Midden to sit downstairs (she has
offered over and over again to do it) so that I might go
too, but of course I wouldn't let him. I really couldn't have
enjoyed it a minute for thinking of the baby, and besides I
never cared for the theatre. Then, too, he doesn't know
(for I never tell him) how very tired I am by the time night
comes. Sometimes when Oliver comes home and we sit in
the dining-room (we never use the drawing-room, because
it is across the hall and I'm afraid I shouldn't hear the baby
cry) it is as much as I can do to keep my eyes open. I try
not to let him notice it, but one night when he read me the
first act of a play he is writing, I went to sleep, and though
he didn't say anything, I could see that he was very much
hurt. He worries a good deal about my health, too, and he
even went out one day and engaged a nurse without saying
anything to me about it. After I had talked to her though, I
saw that she would never do, so I sent her away before he
came home. I wish I could get really strong and feel well
again, but the doctor insists I never will until I get out of
doors

and use my muscles. But you stay in the house all the time
and so did grandmother, so I don't believe there's a word
of truth in what he says. Anyway, I go out every day now
with the baby.

Thank you so much for the
little bands. They are just
what I wanted.

With dearest love,

Your devoted
VIRGINIA.

MATOACA CITY. June 10, 1886.

DEAREST MOTHER:

Daisy left a week ago
and we couldn't find another
servant until to-day. I must say that I prefer coloured
servants. They are so much more dependable. I didn't
know until the evening before Daisy left that she was going,
and I had to send Oliver straight out to see if he could find
somebody to come in and help me. There wasn't a soul to
be had until to-day, however, so for a week I was obliged
to make Oliver get his dinner at the boarding-house. It
doesn't make any difference what I have because I haven't
a particle of appetite, and I'd just as soon eat tea and toast
as anything else. Of course, but for the baby I could have
managed perfectly well - but she has been so fretful of late
that she doesn't let me put her down a minute. The doctor
says her teeth are beginning to hurt her, and that I must
expect to have trouble the first summer. She has been so well
until now that he thinks it has been really remarkable. He
tells me he never knew a healthier baby, but of course I am
terribly anxious about her teething in the hot weather. If she
grows much more fretful I'm afraid I shall have to take

her to the country for July and August. It seems dreadful to
leave Oliver all alone, but I don't see how I can help it if
the doctor advises me to go. Oliver has gone to some
musical comedy at the Academy to-night, and I am so tired
that I am going to bed just as soon as I finish this letter. I
hope and pray that the baby will have a quiet night. Don't
you think that Daisy treated me very badly considering
how kind I had been to her? Only a week ago when she
was taken with pain in the night, I got up and made her a
mustard plaster and sat by her bed until she felt easier. The
next day I did all of her work, and yet she has so little
gratitude that she could leave me this way when she knows
perfectly well that I am worried to death about the baby's
first summer. I'd give anything if I could go home in July as
you suggest, but it is such a long trip, and the heat will
probably be quite as bad in Dinwiddie as here. Of course,
it would make all the difference in the world to me to be
where I could have you to advise me about the baby, and
I'd go to-morrow if it only wasn't so far. Mrs. Midden has
told me of a boarding-house in the country not more than
twenty miles from here where Oliver could come down
every evening, and we may decide to go there for a month
or two. I can't help feeling very anxious, especially as Mrs.
Scott's little boy - he is just the age of baby - was taken ill
the other night, and they thought he would die before they
could get a doctor.

This letter is full of my worries, but in spite of them I am
the happiest woman that ever lived. Oliver is the best thing
to me you can imagine, and the baby is so fascinating that I
enjoy every minute I am with her. It is the greatest fun to
watch her in her bath. I know

you would simply go into raptures over her - and she is so
bright that she already understands every word that I say.
She grows more like Oliver all the time, and the other day
while I was watching her playing with her rubber doll, she
looked so beautiful that it almost frightened me.

I am so glad dear father is well, and what you wrote me
about John Henry's admiration for Susan interested me so
much that I sat straight down and wrote to him. Why do
you think that it is only friendship and that he isn't in love
with her? If he really thinks her the "finest girl in the world,"
I should imagine he was beginning to be pretty serious. I
am delighted to hear that he is going to take her to the
festival. Tell Susan from me that I shall never be satisfied
until she is as happy as I am. Mr. Treadwell was right, I
believe, not to let her go to college, though of course I
want dear Susan to have whatever she sets her heart on.
But, when all is said, you were wise in teaching me that
nothing matters to a woman except love. More and more I
am learning that if we only love unselfishly enough,
everything else will work out for good to us. My little
worries can't keep me from being so blissfully happy that I
want to sing all the time. Work is a joy to me because I
feel that I am doing it for Oliver and the baby. And with
two such treasures to live for I should be the most
ungrateful creature alive if I ever complained.

Your ever loving daughter,
VIRGINIA.

MATOACA CITY, July 1, 1886.

DEAREST MOTHER:

We are leaving suddenly
for the country, and I'll send
our address just as soon as we get there. The doctor

thinks I ought to take the baby away from town, so I am
going to the boarding-house I wrote you about. Oliver will
come down every evening - it's only an hour's trip.

I am so tired from
packing that I can't write any more.

Lovingly,
VIRGINIA.

MATOACA CITY. September 15, 1886.

DEAREST MOTHER:

Here we are back again
in our home, and I was never so
thankful in my life to get away from any place. I wrote you
how dreadfully inconvenient it was, but it would take pages
to tell you all of my experiences in the last few days. Such
people you never saw in your life! And the food got so
uneatable that I lived on crackers for the last fortnight.
Fortunately, I was still nursing the baby, but the doctor has
just told me that I must stop. I am so distressed about it.
Do you think it will go hard with her after the first year?
She is as fat and well as she can be now, but I live in hourly
terror of her getting sick. If anything should happen to her,
I believe it would kill me.

Oliver sends love. He is
working very hard at the office
now, and he hates it.

Your loving
VIRGINIA.

I forgot to tell you that Mrs. Midden has found me such
a nice servant. She is a very young coloured girl, but looks
so kind and capable, and says she is perfectly devoted to
children. Her name is Marthy, and I feel that she's
going to be a great comfort to me.

I was overjoyed to find
your letter in the hall when I
came out from breakfast. Has it really been two weeks
since I wrote to you? That seems dreadful, but the days go
by so fast that I hardly realize how long it is between my
letters.

We are all well, and
Marthy has become the greatest
help to me. Of course, I don't let her do anything for the
baby, but she is so careful and trustworthy that I am going
to try having her take out the carriage in the morning. At
first I shan't let her go off the block, so that I can have my
eye on her all the time. Little Lucy took a fancy to her at
once, and really enjoys playing with her. This makes it
possible for me to do a little sewing, and I am working
hard trying to make over one or two of my dresses. Oliver
wants me to have a dressmaker do it, but we have so
many extra expenses all the time that I don't feel we can
afford to put out any sewing. We have spent a great deal
on doctors since we were married, but of course with a
young child we can't very well expect anything else.

And now, dearest mother,
I have something to tell you,
which no one knows - not even Oliver - except Doctor
Marshall and myself. We are going to have another darling
baby in March, if everything goes as it ought to. I have
kept it a secret because Oliver has had a good many
business worries, and I knew it would make him
miserable. It never seems to have entered his head that it
might happen again so soon, and for his sake I do wish we
could have waited until we got a little more money in the
bank, but I suppose I oughtn't to say this because God
would certainly not

send children into the world unless it was right for them to
be born. I try to remember what dear grandmamma said
when somebody condoled with her at the time she was
expecting her tenth child - that she hoped she was too
good a Christian to dictate to the Lord as to how many
souls He should send into the world. As for me, I should be
perfectly delighted - it will be so much better for baby to
have a little brother or sister to play with when she gets
bigger - but I can't help worrying about Oliver's peculiar
attitude of mind. I am sure that father wouldn't have felt that
way, and think how poor he has always been. Perhaps it
comes from dear Oliver having lived abroad so much and
away from the Christian influences, which have been one of
the greatest blessings of my life. I have put off telling him
every day just because I dread to think of the blow it will
be to him. He is the dearest and best husband that ever
lived, and I worship the ground he walks on, but, do you
know, things are always a surprise to him when they
happen? He never looks ahead a single minute. I am
sometimes afraid that he isn't the least bit practical, and it
makes him impatient when I talk to him about trying to cut
down expenses. Of course I have to save as much as I can
and I count every single penny, or we'd never have enough
money to get through the month. I never buy a stitch for
either the baby or myself, though Oliver complains now and
then that I don't dress as well as I used to do. But how can
I when I've worn the same things ever since my marriage,
besides making the baby's clothes out of my old ones? You
can understand from this how grateful I am for the check
you sent - but, dearest mother, I know that you oughtn't to
have done it, and

CHAPTER III
THE RETURN
ON A February morning five years later, Mrs.
Pendleton, who was returning from her daily trip to the
market, met Susan Treadwell at the corner of Old Street.

"You are coming up to welcome Jinny, aren't you,
Susan?" she asked. "The train gets in at four o'clock."

"Why, of course. I couldn't sleep a wink until I'd seen
her. It has been seven years, and it seems a perfect
eternity."

"She hasn't changed much - at least she hadn't six
months ago when I was out there at the birth of her last
baby. The little thing lived only two hours, you know, and
I thought at first his death would kill her."

"It was a great blow - but she has been fortunate never
to have had a day's sickness with the other three. I am
dying to see them - especially the eldest. That's your
namesake, isn't it."

"Yes, that's Lucy. She's six years old now, and as good
as an angel, but she hasn't fulfilled her promise of beauty.
Virginia says she was the prettiest baby she ever saw."

"Everybody says that Jenny, the youngest, is a perfect
beauty."

"That's why her father makes so much of her, I reckon.
I told him when I was out there that he

oughtn't to show such a difference between them. Do you
know, Susan, I wouldn't say it to anybody else, but I don't
believe Oliver has a real fondness for children. He gets
tired of having them always about, and that makes him
impatient. Now, Virginia is a born mother, just like her
grandmother and all the women of our family."

"I should think Oliver would be crazy about the boy.
He was named after his father, too."

"Virginia felt she ought to name him Henry, but we call
him Harry. No, Oliver hardly ever takes any notice of him.
I don't mean, of course, that he isn't nice and kind to
them - but he isn't wrapped up in them heart and soul as
Virginia is. I really believe he is more absorbed in this play
he has written than he is in the children."

"I am so glad to hear that two of his plays are going to
be staged. That's splendid, isn't it?"

"He is coming back to Dinwiddie because of it. Now
that he is assured of recognition, he says he is going to
devote all his time to writing. Poor fellow, he did so hate
the work out at Matoaca City, though I must say he was
very faithful and persevering about it."

"You've taken that little house in Prince Street for them,
where old Miss Franklin used to live, haven't you? The
last time I saw you, you hadn't quite decided about it."

"I couldn't resist it because it is only three squares from
the rectory. Mr. Pendleton set his heart on it from the first
minute."

"Well, I'm so glad," said Susan, shifting the small basket
of fruit she carried from one arm to the other,

"and I'll certainly run in and see them this evening - I
suppose they'll be at the rectory for supper?"

"Why, no. Jinny said she couldn't bear to be away from
the children the first night, so we are all going there. I shall
send Docia over to cook supper before they get here, and
I've just been to market to see if I could find anything that
Oliver would particularly like. He used to be so fond of
sweetbreads."

"Mr. Dewlap has some very nice ones. I got one for
mother. She hasn't been well for the last few days."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Give her my love and tell her I'll
come down just as soon as I get Jinny settled. I've been so
taken up getting the house ready that I haven't thought of
another thing for three weeks."

"When will Oliver's play be put on in New York?"
asked Susan, turning back after they had parted.

"In three weeks. He is going back again for the last
rehearsals. I wish Jinny could go with him, but I don't
believe she would spend a night away from the children for
anything on earth."

"Isn't it beautiful that her marriage has turned out so
well?"

"Yes, I don't believe she could be any happier if she
tried, and I must say that Oliver makes a much better
husband than I ever thought he would. I never heard them
disagree the whole time I was there. Of course, Jinny gives
up to him in everything except where the children are
concerned, but, then, a woman always expects to do that.
One thing I'm certain of - he couldn't have found a better
wife if he'd searched the world over. She never thinks of
herself a minute, and you know how fond she used to be
of pretty clothes and

of fixing herself up. Now, she simply lives in Oliver and the
children, and she is the proudest thing of his plays! The
rector says that she thinks he is Shakespeare and Milton
rolled into one."

"Nothing could be nicer," said Susan, "and it is all such a
happy surprise to me. Of course, I always thought Oliver
very attractive - everybody does - but he seemed to me
to be selfish and undisciplined, and I wasn't at all sure that
Jinny was the kind of woman to bring out the best in him."

"You'll think so when you see them together."

Then they smiled and parted, Mrs. Pendleton hurrying
back to the little house, while Susan turned down Old
Street, in the direction of her home. She walked rapidly,
with an easy swinging pace seldom seen in the women of
Dinwiddie, and not heartily approved by the men. At
twenty-seven she was far handsomer than she had been at
twenty, for her figure had grown more shapely and her face
had lost the look of intense preoccupation which had once
marred its charm. Strong, capable, conquering, she still
appeared; but in some subtle way she had grown softer.
Mrs. Pendleton would probably have said that she had
"settled."

At the first corner she met John Henry on his way to
the bank, and turning, he walked with her to the end of
the block, where they stood a moment discussing
Virginia's return.

"I've just been to attend to some bills," he explained;
"that's why I'm out at this hour. You never come into the
bank now, I notice."

Virginia with three children, can you? I'm half afraid
to see her again."

"You mean you think she may have changed? Mrs.
Pendleton says not."

"Oh, that's Aunt Lucy all over. If Virginia had got as fat
as Miss Priscilla, she'd still believe she hadn't altered a
particle."

"Well, she isn't fat, anyway. She weighs less than she
ever did."

Her serious eyes dwelt on him under the green sunshade
she held, and it is possible that she wondered vaguely
what it was about John Henry that had made her love him
unsought ever since she could remember. He was certainly
not handsome - though he was less stout and much better
looking than he used to be: he was not particularly clever,
even if he was successful with the work Cyrus had given
him. She was under no delusion concerning him (being a
remarkably clearsighted young person), yet she knew that
taking him just as he was, large, slow, kind, good, he
aroused in her a tenderness that was almost ridiculous;
She had waited patiently seven years for him to discover
that he cared for her - a fact which had been perfectly
evident to her long before his duller wit had perceived it.

"Do you want to be there to welcome Jinny?" he asked.

"I'd thought I'd go up about five, so I could get a
glimpse of the children before they are put to bed."

"Then I'll meet you there and bring you home. I
wouldn't take anything for meeting you, Susan. There's
something about you that always cheers me."

she replied in her confident way, and held out her hand
through the handle of the basket. An instant later, when
she passed on into Bolingbroke Street, there was a smile
on her face which made it almost pretty.

The front door was open, and as she entered the house
her mother came groping toward her out of the close-smelling
dusk of the hall.

"I thought you'd never get back, Susan. I've had such a
funny feeling."

"What kind of feeling, mother? It must be just
nervousness. Here are some beautiful grapes I've brought
you."

"I wish you wouldn't leave me alone. I don't like to be
left alone."

"Well, I don't leave you any more than I'm obliged to,
but if I stay shut up here I feel as if I'd smother. I've asked
Miss Willy to come and sit with you this evening while I
run up to welcome Virginia."

"Is she coming back? Nobody told me. Nobody tells
me anything."

"But I did tell you. Why, we've been talking about it for
weeks. You must have forgotten."

"I shouldn't have forgotten it. I'm sure I shouldn't have
forgotten it if you had told me. But you keep everything
from me. You are just like your father. You and James are
both just like your father." Her voice had grown peevish,
and an expression of fury distorted her usually passive
features.

"Why, mother, what in the world is the matter?" asked
Susan, startled by her manner. "Come up stairs and lie
down. I don't believe you are well. You didn't eat a
morsel of breakfast, so I'm going to

fix you a nice little lunch. I got you a beautiful sweetbread
from Mr. Dewlap."

Putting her arm about her, she led her up the long
light of steps to her room, where Mrs. Treadwell, pacified
by the attention, began immediately to doze on the
chintz-covered couch by the window.

"I don't see what on earth ever made me marry your
father, Susan," she said, starting up half an hour later,
when her daughter appeared with the tray. "Everybody
knew the Treadwells couldn't hold a candle to my family."

"I wouldn't worry about that now, mother," replied
Susan briskly, while she placed the tray on a little table at
the head of the couch. "Sit up and eat these oysters."

"I'm obliged to worry over it," returned Mrs. Treadwell
irritably, while she watched her daughter arrange her plate
and pour out the green tea from the little Rebecca-at-the-well
teapot. "I don't see what got into my head and made
me do it. Why, his branch of the Treadwells had petered
out until they were as common as dirt."

"Well, it's too late to mend matters, so we'd better turn
in and try to make the best of them." She held out an
oyster on the end of a fork, and her mother received and
ate it obediently.

"If I could only once understand why I did it, I think I
could rest easier, Susan."

"Perhaps you were in love with each other. I've heard
of such a thing."

"Well, if I was going to fall in love, I reckon I could
have found somebody better to fall in love with," retorted
Mrs. Treadwell with the same strange excitement

in her manner. Then she took up her knife and
fork and began to eat her luncheon with relish.

At five o'clock that afternoon, when Susan reached the
house in Prince Street, Virginia, with her youngest child in
her arms, was just stepping out of a dilapidated "hack,"
from which a grinning negro driver handed a collection of
lunch baskets into the eager hands of the rector and Mrs.
Pendleton, who stood on the pavement.

"Here's Susan!" called Mrs. Pendleton in her cheerful
voice, rather as if she feared her daughter would
overlook her friend in the excitement of homecoming.

"Oh, you darling Susan!" exclaimed Virginia, kissing her
over the head of a sleeping child in her arms. "This is
Jenny - poor little thing, she hasn't been able to keep her
eyes open. Don't you think she is the living image of our
Saint Memin portrait of great-grandmamma?"

"She's a cherub," said Susan. "Let me look at you first,
Jinny. I want to see if you've changed."

"Well, you can't expect me to look exactly as I did
before I had four babies!" returned Virginia with a happy
laugh. She was thinner, and there were dark circles of
fatigue from the long journey under her eyes, but the
Madonna-like possibilities in her face were fulfilled, and it
seemed to Susan that she was, if anything, lovelier
than before. The loss of her girlish bloom was
forgotten in the expression of love and goodness which
irradiated her features. She wore a black cloth skirt, and a
blouse of some ugly blue figured silk finished at the neck
with the lace scarf Susan had sent her at Christmas. Her
hat was a characterless black

straw trimmed with a bunch of yellow daisies; and by its
shape alone, Susan discerned that Viriginia had ceased to
consider whether or not her clothes were becoming. But
she shone with an air of calm and radiant happiness in
which all trivial details were transfigured as by a flood of
light.

"This is Lucy. She is six years old, and to think that she
has never seen her dear Aunt Susan," said Virginia, while
she pulled forward the little girl who was shyly clinging to
her skirt. "And the other is Harry. Marthy, bring Harry here
and let him speak to Miss Susan. He is nearly four, and so
big for his age. Where is Harry, Marthy?"

"He's gone into the yard, ma'am, I couldn't keep him
back," said Marthy. "As soon as he caught sight of that
pile of bricks he wanted to begin building."

"Well, we'll go, too," replied Virginia. "That child is
simply crazy about building. Has Oliver paid the driver,
mother? And what has become of him? Susan, have you
spoken to Oliver?"

No, Susan hadn't, but as they turned, he appeared on
the porch and came eagerly forward. Her first impression
was that he had grown handsomer than she had ever
believed possible; and the next minute she asked herself
how in the world he had managed to exercise his vitality in
Matoaca City. He was one of those men, she saw, in
whom the spirit of youth burned like a flame. Every year
would pass as a blessing, not as a curse, to him, and
already, because of her intenser emotions and her
narrower interests, Virginia was beginning to look older
than he. There was a difference, too, in their dress, for
he had the carefully

groomed and well-brushed appearance so rare in Dinwiddie,
while Virginia's clothes might have been worn,
with equal propriety, by Miss Priscilla Batte. She was still
lovely, but it was a loveliness, Susan felt with a pang, that
would break early.

"Why, there's Susan!" exclaimed Oliver, coming
toward her with an eager pleasure in his face which made
it more boyish than ever. "Well, well, it's good to see you,
Susan. Are you the same old dear I left behind me?"

"The same," said Susan laughing. "And so glad about
your plays, Oliver, so perfectly delighted."

"By Jove, you're the first person to speak of them," he
replied. "Nobody else seems to think a play is worth
mentioning as long as a baby is in sight. That's a delusion
of Virginia's, too. I wish you'd convince her, Susan, that a
man is of some use except as a husband and a father."

"But they are such nice babies, Oliver."

"Oh, nice enough as babies go. The boy's a trump.
He'd be a man already if his mother would let him. But
babies ought to have their season like everything else
under the sun. For God's sake, Susan, talk to me about
something else!" he added in mock despair.

Virginia was already in the house, and when Oliver and
Susan joined her, they found Mrs. Pendleton trying to
persuade her to let Marthy carry the sleeping Jenny up to
the nursery.

"Give me that child, Jinny," said Oliver, a bide sharply.
"You know the doctor told you not to carry her upstairs."

"But I'm sure it won't hurt me," she responded, with an
angelic sweetness of voice. "It will wake her

"Why, bless you, sir, I can take her so she won't know
it," returned Marthy reassuringly, and coming forward, she
proved her ability by sliding the unconscious child from
Virginia's arms into her own.

"Where is Harry?" asked Mrs. Pendleton anxiously.
"Nobody has seen Harry since we got here."

"I is, ma'am," replied the cheerful Marthy over her
shoulder, as she toiled up the stairs, with Virginia and little
Lucy noiselessly following. "I've undressed him and I was
obliged to hide his clothes to keep him from putting 'em on
again. He's near daft with excitement."

"Perhaps I'd better go up and help get them to bed,"
said Mrs. Pendleton, turning from the rector to Oliver.
"I'm afraid Jinny will be too tired to enjoy her supper.
Harry is in such a gale of spirits I can hear him talking."

"You might as well, my dear," rejoined the rector mildly,
as he stooped over to replace one of the baby's bottles in
the basket from which it had slipped. "Don't you think we
might get some of these things out of the way?" he added.
"If you take that alcohol stove, Oliver, I'll follow with
these caps and shawls."

"Certainly, sir," rejoined Oliver readily. He always
addressed the rector as "sir," partly because it seemed to
him to be appropriate, partly because he knew that the
older man expected him to do so. It was one of Oliver's
most engaging characteristics that he usually

adapted himself with perfect ease to whatever life or other
people expected of him.

While they were carrying the baskets into the passage
at the back of the dining-room, Mrs. Pendleton, whose
nervous longing had got at last beyond her control,
deserted Susan, with an apology, and flitted up the stairs.

"Come up and tell Jinny good-night before you go,
dear," she added; "I'm afraid she will not get down again
to see you."

"Oh, don't worry about me," replied Susan. "I want to
say a few words to Oliver, and then I'm coming up to see
Harry. Harry appears to me to be a man of personality."

"He's a darling child," replied Mrs. Pendleton, a little
vaguely, "and Jinny says she never saw him so headstrong
before. He is usually as good as gold."

"Well, well, it's a fine family," said the rector, beaming
upon his son-in-law, when they returned from the
passage. "I never saw three healthier children. It's a pity
you lost the other one," he added in a graver tone, "but as
he lived such a short time, Virginia couldn't take it so
much to heart as if he had been older. She seems to have
got over the disappointment."

"Yes, I think she's got over it," said Oliver.

"It will be good for her to be back in Dinwiddie. I
never felt satisfied to think of her so far away."

"Yes, I'm glad we could come back," agreed Oliver
pleasantly, though he appeared to Susan's quick eye to
be making an effort.

"By the way, I haven't spoken of your literary world,"
remarked the rector, with the manner of a man who is
saying something very agreeable. "I have never been

to the theatre, but I understand that it is losing a great deal
of its ill odour. I always remember when anything is said
about the stage that, after all, Shakespeare was an actor.
We may be old-fashioned in Dinwiddie," he pursued in
the complacent tone in which the admission of this failing is
invariably made, "but I don't think we can have any
objection to sweet, clean plays, with an elevating moral
tone to them. They are no worse, anyway, than novels."

Though Oliver kept his face under such admirable
control, Susan, glancing at him quickly, saw a shade of
expression, too fine for amusement, too cordial for
resentment, pass over his features. His colour, which was
always high, deepened, and raising his head, he brushed
the smooth dark hair back from his forehead. Through
some intuitive strain of sympathy, Susan understood, while
she watched him, that his plays were as vital a matter in his
life as the children were in Virginia's.

"I must run up and see Harry before he goes to sleep,"
she said, feeling instinctively that the conversation was
becoming a strain.

At the allusion to his grandson, the rector's face lost
immediately its expression of forced pleasantness and
relapsed into its look of genial charm.

"You ought to be proud of that boy, Oliver," he
observed, beaming. "There's the making of a fine man in
him, but you mustn't let Jinny spoil him. It took all my
strength and authority to keep Lucy from ruining Jinny,
and I've always said that my brother-in-law Tom Bland
would have been a first-rate fellow if it hadn't been for the
way his mother raised him. God knows, I like a woman to
be wrapped up heart and

soul in her household - and I don't suppose anybody ever
accused the true Southern lady of lacking in
domesticity - but if they have a failing, which I refuse to
admit, it is that they are almost too soft-hearted where
their children - especially their sons - are concerned."

"I used to tell Virginia that she gave in to Harry too
much when he was a baby," said Oliver, who was
evidently not without convictions regarding the rearing of
his offspring; "but she hasn't been nearly so bad about it
since Jenny came. Jenny is the one I'm anxious about now.
She is a headstrong little beggar and she has learned
already how to get around her mother when she wants
anything. It's been worse, too," he added, "since we lost
the last poor little chap. Ever since then Virginia has been
in mortal terror for fear something would happen to the
others."

"It was hard on her," said the rector. "We men can't
understand how women feel about a thing like that,
though," he added gently. "I remember when we lost our
babies - you know we had three before Virginia came,
but none of them lived more than a few hours - that I
thought Lucy would die of grief and disappointment.
You see they have all the burden and the anxiety
of it, and I sometimes think that a child begins to live for a
woman a long time before a man ever thinks of it as a
human being."

"I suppose you're right," returned Oliver in the softened
tone which proved to Susan that he was emotionally
stirred. "I tried to be as sympathetic with Virginia as I
could, but - do you know? - I stopped to ask myself
sometimes if I could really understand. It seemed to her so
strange that I wasn't

knocked all to pieces by the thing - that I could go on
writing as if nothing had happened."

"I am not sure that it isn't beyond the imagination of a
man to enter into a woman's most sacred feeling,"
remarked the rector, with a touch of the sentimentality in
which he religiously shrouded the feminine sex. So
ineradicable, indeed, was his belief in the inherent virtue of
every woman, that he had several times fallen a helpless
victim in the financial traps of conscienceless Delilahs. But
since his innocence was as temperamental a quality as was
Virginia's maternal passion, experience had taught him
nothing, and the fact that he had been deceived in the past
threw no shadow of safeguard around his steps in the
present. This endearing trait, which made him so successful
as a husband, was probably the cause of his unmitigated
failure as a reformer. In looking at a woman, it was
impossible for him to see anything except perfection.

When Susan reached the top of the staircase, Mrs.
Pendleton called to her, through the half open door of the
nursery, to come in and hear how beautifully Lucy was
saying her prayers. Her voice was full of a suppressed
excitement; there was a soft pink flush in her cheeks; and it
seemed to Susan that the presence of her grandchildren
had made her almost a girl again. She sat on the edge of a
trundle-bed slipping a nightgown over the plump shoulders
of little Lucy, who held herself very still and prim, for she
was a serious child, with a natural taste for propriety. Her
small plain face, with its prominent features and pale blue
eyes, had a look of intense earnestness and concentration,
as though the business of getting to bed absorbed all her
energies; and the only movement she made

was to toss back the slender and very tight braid of
brown hair from her shoulders. She said her prayer as if it
were the multiplication table, and having finished, slid
gently into bed, and held up her face to be kissed.

"Jenny wouldn't drink but half of her bottle, Miss
Virginia," said Marthy, appearing suddenly on the threshold
of Virginia's bedroom, for the youngest child slept in the
room with her mother. "She dropped off to sleep so sound
that I couldn't wake her."

"I hope she isn't sick, Marthy," responded Virginia in an
anxious tone. "Did she seem at all feverish?"

"Naw'm, she ain't feverish, she's jest sleepy headed."

"Well, I'll come and look at her as soon as I can
persuade Harry to finish his prayers. He stopped in the
middle of them, and he refuses to bless anybody but
himself."

She spoke gravely, gazing with her exhaustless patience
over the impish yellow head of Harry, who knelt, in his
little nightgown, on the rug at her feet. His roving blue eyes
met Susan's as she came over to him, while his chubby
face broke into a delicious smile.

"Don't notice him, Susan," said Virginia, in her lovely
voice which was as full of tenderness and as lacking in
humour as her mother's. "Harry, you shan't speak to Aunt
Susan until you've been good and finished your prayers."

"Don't want to speak to Aunt Susan," retorted the
monster of infant depravity, slipping his bare toes through
a rent in the rug, and doubling up with delight at his
insubordination.

"I never knew him to behave like this before," said
Virginia, almost in tears from shame and weariness.

"He has gone on like that ever since I started," said poor
Virginia. "I don't know what to do about it. It seems
dreadful to let him go to bed without saying his prayers
properly. Now, Harry, please, please be good; poor
mother is so tired, and she wants to go and kiss little Jenny
good-night. 'God bless dear papa,' and I'll let you get in
bed."

"I suppose I'll have to let him go," said Virginia,
distractedly, "but Oliver will be horrified. He says I don't
reason with them enough. Harry," she concluded sternly,
"don't you understand that it is naughty of you to behave
this way and keep mamma away from poor little Jenny?"

"Bad Jenny," said Harry.

"If you don't say your prayers this minute, you shan't
have any preserves on your bread to-morrow."

"Bad preserves," retorted Harry.

"Well, if he won't, I don't see how I can make him," said
Virginia. "Come, then, get into bed, Harry, and go to
sleep. You have been a bad boy and hurt poor mamma's
feelings so that she is going to cry.

"Oh, you precious lamb!" exclaimed Virginia. "He
couldn't bear to hurt poor mamma, could he?" and she
kissed him ecstatically before hastening to the slumbering
Jenny in the adjoining room.

"I like the little scamp," said Susan, when she reported
the scene to John Henry on the way home, "but he
manages his mother perfectly. Already his sense of humour
is better developed than hers."

"I can't get over seeing Virginia with children,"
observed John Henry, as if the fact of Virginia's
motherhood had just become evident to him. "It suits her,
though. She looked happier than I ever saw her - and so,
for that matter, did Aunt Lucy."

"It made me wonder how Mrs. Pendleton had lived
away from them for seven years. Why, you can't imagine
what she is - she doesn't seem to have any life at all until
you see her with Virginia's children."

"It's a wonderful thing," said John Henry slowly, "and it
taught me a lot just to look at them. I don't know why, but
it seemed to make me understand how much I care about
you, Susan."

"Hadn't you suspected it before?" asked Susan as
calmly as he had spoken. Emotionalism, she knew, she
would never find in John Henry's wooing, and,

though she could not have explained the reason of it to
herself, she liked the brusque directness of his courtship. It
was part of that large sincerity of nature which had first
attracted her to him.

"Of course, in a way I knew I cared more for you than
for anybody else - but I didn't realize that you were more
to me than Virginia had ever been. I had got so in the habit
of thinking I was in love with her that it came almost as a
surprise to me to find that it was over."

"I knew it long ago," said Susan.

"Why didn't you make me see it?"

"Oh, I waited for you to find it out yourself. I was sure
that you would some day."

"Do you think you could ever care for me, Susan?"

A smile quivered on Susan's lips as she looked up at
him, but with the reticence which had always characterized
her, she answered simply:

"I think I could, John Henry."

His hand reached down and closed over hers, and in the
long look which they exchanged under the flickering street
lamp, she felt suddenly that perfect security which is
usually the growth of happy years. Whatever the future
brought to them, she knew that she could trust John
Henry's love for her.

"And we've lost seven years, dearest," he said, with a
catch in his voice. "We've lost seven years just because I
happened to be born a fool."

"But we've got fifty ahead of us," she replied with a
joyous laugh.

As she spoke, her heart cried out, "Fifty years of the
thing I want!" and she looked up into the kind, serious
face of John Henry as if it were the face of

incarnate happiness. A tremendous belief in life surged
from her brain through her body, which felt incredibly
warm and young. She thought exultantly of herself as of
one who did not accept destiny, but commanded it.

They walked the rest of the way in silence, but he held
her hand pressed closely against his heart, and once or
twice he turned in the deserted street and looked into her
eyes as if he found there all the words that he needed.

"We won't waste any more time, will we, Susan?" he
asked when they reached the house. "Let's be married in
December."

"If mother is better by then. She hasn't been well, and I
am anxious about her."

"We'll go to housekeeping at once. I'll begin looking
about to-morrow. God bless you, darling, for what you
are giving me."

She caressed his hand gently with her fingers, and he
was about to speak again, when the door behind them
opened and the head of Cyrus appeared like that of a
desolate bird of prey.

"Is that you, Susan?" he inquired. "Where have you
been all this time? Your mother was taken ill more than an
hour ago, and the doctor says that she has been
paralyzed."

Breaking away from John Henry, Susan ran up the
steps and past her father into the hall, where Miss Willy
stood weeping.

"I was all by myself with her. There wasn't another living
soul in the house," sobbed the little dressmaker. "She fell
over just like that, with her face all twisted, while I was
talking to her."

"Oh, poor mother, poor mother!" cried the girl as she
ran upstairs. "Is she in her room, and who is with her?"

"The doctor has been there for over an hour, and he
says that she'll never be able to move again. Oh, Susan,
how will she stand it?"

But Susan had already outstripped her, and was entering
the sick-room, where Mrs. Treadwell lay unconscious,
with her distorted face turned toward the door, as though
she were watching expectantly for some one who would
never come. As the girl fell on her knees beside the couch,
her happiness seemed to dissolve like mist before the grim
facts of mortal anguish and death. It was not until dawn,
when the night's watch was over and she stood alone
beside her window, that she said to herself with all the
courage she could summon:

"And it's over for me, too. Everything is over for me,
too. Oh, poor, poor mother!"

Love, which had seemed to her last night the supreme
spirit in the universe, had surrendered its authority to the
diviner image of Duty.

CHAPTER IV
HER CHILDREN
"POOR Aunt Belinda was paralyzed last night, Oliver,"
said Virginia the next morning at breakfast. "Miss Willy
Whitlow just brought me a message from Susan. She spent
the night there and was on her way this morning to ask
mother to go."

Oliver had come downstairs in one of his absentminded
moods, but by the time Virginia had repeated her news he
was able to take it in, and to show a proper solicitude for
his aunt.

"Are you going there?" he asked. "I am obliged to do a
little work on my play while I have the idea, but tell Susan
I'll come immediately after dinner."

"I'll stop to inquire on my way back from market, but I
won't be able to stay, because I've got all my unpacking to
do. Can you take the children out this afternoon so Marthy
can help me?"

"I'm sorry, but I simply can't. I've got to get on with this
idea while I have control of it, and if I go out with the
children I shan't be able to readjust my thoughts for
twenty-fours hours."

"I'd like to go out with papa," said Lucy, who sat
carefully drinking her cambric tea, so that she might not
spill a drop on the mahogany table.

"I want to go with papa," remarked Harry
obstreperously, while he began to drum with his spoon on the

"Papa can't go with you, darling, but if mamma finishes
her unpacking in time, she'll come out into the park and
play with you a little while. Be careful, Harry, you are
spilling your milk. Let mamma take your spoon out for
you."

Her coffee, which she had poured out a quarter of an
hour ago, stood untasted and tepid beside her plate, but
from long habit she had grown to prefer it in that condition.
When the waffles were handed to her, she had absent-mindedly
helped herself to one, while she watched Harry's
reckless efforts to cut up his bacon, and it had grown
sodden before she remembered that it ought to be
buttered. She wore the black skirt and blue blouse in which
she had travelled, for she had neglected to unpack her own
clothes in her eagerness to get out the things that Oliver and
the children might need. Her hair had been hastily coiled
around her head, without so much as a glance in the mirror,
but the expression of unselfish goodness in her face lent a
charm even to the careless fashion in which she had put on
her clothes. She was one of those women whose beauty,
being essentially virginal, belongs, like the blush of the
rose, to a particular season. The delicacy of her skin invited
the mark of time or of anxiety, and already fine little lines
were visible, in the strong light of the morning, at the
corners of her eyes and mouth. Yet neither the years or her
physical neglect of herself could destroy the look of almost
angelic sweetness and love which illumined her features.

"Are you obliged to go to New York next week,
Oliver?" she asked, dividing her attention equally between

him and Harry's knife and fork. "Can't they rehearse
'The Beaten Road' just as well without you?"

"No, I want to be there. Is there any reason why I
shouldn't?"

"Of course not. I was only thinking that Harry's birthday
comes on Friday, and we should miss you."

"Well, I'm awfully sorry, but he'll have to grow old
without me. By the way, why can't you run on with me for
the first night, Virginia? Your mother can look after the
babies for a couple of days, can't she?"

But the absent-minded look of young motherhood had
settled again on Virginia's face, for the voice of Jenny,
raised in exasperated demand, was heard from the nursery
above.

"I wonder what's the matter?" she said, half rising in her
chair, while she glanced nervously at the door. "She was so
fretful last night, Oliver, that I'm afraid she is going to be
sick. Will you keep an eye on Harry while I run up and
see?"

Ten minutes later she came down again, and began,
with a relieved manner, to stir her cold coffee.

"What were you saying, Oliver?" she inquired so
sweetly that his irritation vanished.

"I was just asking you if you couldn't let your mother
look after the youngsters for a day or two and come on
with me."

"Oh, I'd give anything in the world to see it, but I
couldn't possibly leave the children. I'd be so terribly
anxious for fear something would happen."

"Sometimes I get in a blue funk about that play," he said
seriously. "I've staked so much on it that I'll be pretty well
cut up, morally and financially, if it doesn't go."

"But of course it will go, Oliver. Anybody could tell that
just to read it. Didn't Mr. Martin write you that he thought
it one of the strongest plays ever written in America - and
I'm sure that is a great deal for a manager to say.
Nobody could read a line of it without seeing that it is a
work of genius."

For an instant he appeared to draw assurance from her
praise; then his face clouded, and he responded doubtfully:

"But you thought just as well of 'April Winds,' and
nobody would look at that."

"Well, that was perfect too, of its kind, but of course
they are different."

"I never thought much of that," he said, "but I honestly
believe that 'The Beaten Road' is a great play. That's my
judgment, and I'll stand by it."

"Of course it's great," she returned emphatically. "No,
Harry, you can't have any more syrup on your buckwheat
cake. You have eaten more already than sister Lucy, and
she is two years older than you are."

"Give it to the little beggar. It won't hurt him," said
Oliver impatiently, as Harry began to protest.

"But he really oughtn't to have it, Oliver. Well, then, just
a drop. Oh, Oliver, you've given him a great deal too
much. Here, take mamma's plate and give her yours,
Harry."

But Harry made no answer to her plea, because he was
busily eating the syrup as fast as he could under pressure
of the fear that he might lose it all if he procrastinated.

"He'll be sick before night and you'll have yourself to
blame, Oliver," said Virginia reproachfully.

naturally that Oliver's interest in the small details of his
children's clothes or health was perpetually fresh and
absorbing like her own, and her habit of not seeing what
she did not want to see in life had protected her from the
painful discovery that he was occasionally bored. Once he
had even tried to explain to her that, although he loved the
children better than either his plays or the political fate of
nations, there were times when the latter questions
interested him considerably more; but the humour with
which he inadvertently veiled his protest had turned the
point of it entirely away from her comprehension. A deeper
impression was made upon her by the fact that he had
refused to stop reading about the last Presidential campaign
long enough to come and persuade Harry to swallow a
dose of medicine. She, who seldom read a newspaper, and
was innocent of any desire to exert even the most indirect
influence upon the elections, had waked in the night to ask
herself if it could possibly be true that Oliver loved the
children less passionately than she did.

"I've got to get to work now, dear," he said, rising. "I
haven't had a quiet breakfast since Harry first came to the
table. Don't you think Marthy might feed him upstairs
again?"

"Oh, Oliver! It would break his heart. He would think
that he was in disgrace."

"Well, I'm not sure that he oughtn't to be. Now, Lucy's
all right. She behaves like a lady - but if you consider
Harry an appetizing table companion, I don't."

"But, dearest, he's only a baby! And boys are different
from girls. You can't expect them to have as good
manners."

"Your father was very strict with you. But surely you
don't think it is right to make your children afraid of you?"

The genuine distress in her voice brought a laugh from
him.

"Oh, well, they are your children, darling, and you may
do as you please with them."

"Bad papa!" said Harry suddenly, chasing the last drop
of syrup around his plate with a bit of bread crumb.

"Oh, no, precious; good papa! You must promise papa
to be a little gentleman or he won't let you breakfast with
him any more."

It was Virginia's proud boast that Harry's smile would
melt even his great-uncle, Cyrus, and she watched him
with breathless rapture as he turned now in his high chair
and tested the effect of this magic charm on his father. His
baby mouth broadened deliciously, showing two rows of
small irregular teeth; his blue eyes shone until they seemed
full of sparkles; his roguish, irresistible face became an
incarnation of infant entreaty.

"I want to bekfast wid papa, an' I want more 'lasses," he
remarked.

"He's a fascinating little rascal, there's no doubt of that,"
observed Oliver, in response to Virginia's triumphant look.
Then, bending over, he kissed her on the cheek, before he
picked up his newspapers and went into his study at the
back of the parlour.

Some hours later, at their early dinner, she reported the
result of her visit to the Treadwells.

"It is too awful, Oliver. Aunt Belinda has not spoken
yet, and she can't move the lower part of her body at all.
The doctor says she may live for years, but he doesn't think
she will ever be able to walk again. I feel so sorry for her
and for poor Susan. Do you know, Susan engaged herself
to John Henry last night just before her mother was
paralyzed, and they were to be married in December. But
now she says she will give him up."

"John Henry!" exclaimed Oliver in amazement. "Why,
what in the world does she see in John Henry?"

"I don't know - one never knows what people see in
each other, but she has been in love with him all her life, I
believe."

"Well, it's rough on her. Is she obliged to break off with
him now?"

"She says it wouldn't be fair to him not to. Her whole
time must be given to nursing her mother. There's
something splendid about Susan, Oliver. I never realized it
as much as I did to-day. Whatever she does, you may be
sure it will be because it is right to do it. She sees
everything so clearly, and her wishes never obscure her
judgment."

"It's a pity. She'd make a great mother, wouldn't she?
But life doesn't seem able to get along without a sacrifice
of the fittest."

In the afternoon Mrs. Pendleton came over, but the two
women were so busy arranging the furniture in its proper
place, and laying away Oliver's and the children's things in
drawers and closets, that not until the entire house had
been put in order, did they find time to sit down for a few
minutes in the nursery and discuss the future of Susan.

"I believe John Henry will want to marry her and go to
live at the Treadwells', if Susan will let him," remarked
Mrs. Pendleton.

"How on earth could he get on with Uncle Cyrus?" Ever
since her marriage Virginia had followed Oliver's habit and
spoken of Cyrus as "uncle."

"Well, I don't suppose even John Henry could do that,
but perhaps he thinks anything would be better than losing
Susan."

"And he's right," returned Virginia loyally, while she got
out her work-bag and began sorting the array of stockings
that needed darning. "Do you know, mother, Oliver seems
to think that I might go to New York with him."

"And leave the children, Jinny?"

"Of course I've told him that I can't, but he's asked me
two or three times to let you look after them for a day or
two."

"I'd love to do it, darling - but you've never spent a night
away from one of them since Lucy was born, have you?"

"No, and I'd be perfectly miserable - only I can't make
Oliver understand it. Of course, they'd be just as safe with
you as with me, but I'd keep imagining every minute that
something had happened."

"I know exactly how you feel, dear. I never spent a
night outside my home after my first child came until you
grew up. I don't see how any true woman could bear to
do it, unless, of course, she was called away because of a
serious illness."

"If Oliver were ill, or you, or father, I'd go in a minute
unless one of the children was really sick - but just to see
a play is different, and I'd feel as if I

were neglecting my duty. The funny part is that Oliver is so
wrapped up in this play that he doesn't seem to be able to
get his mind off it, poor darling. Father was never that way
about his sermons, was he?"

"Your father never thought of himself or of his own
interests enough, Jinny. If he ever had a fault, it was that.
But I suppose he approaches perfection as nearly as a
man ever did."

Slipping the darning gourd into the toe of one of Lucy's
little white stockings, Virginia gazed attentively at a small
round hole while she held her needle arrested slightly
above it. So exquisitely Madonna-like was the poise of
her head and the dreaming, prophetic mystery in her face,
that Mrs. Pendleton waited almost breathlessly for her
words.

"There's not a single thing that I would change in Oliver,
if I could," she said at last.

"It is so beautiful that you feel that way, darling. I
suppose all happily married women do."

A week later, across Harry's birthday cake, which
stood surrounded by four candles in the centre of the
rectory table, Virginia offered her cheerful explanation of
Oliver's absence, in reply to a mild inquiry from the rector.
"He was obliged to go to New York yesterday about the
rehearsal of 'The Beaten Road,' father. We were both so
sorry he couldn't be here to-day, but it was impossible for
him to wait over."

"It's a pity," said the rector gently. "Harry will never be
just four years old again, will you, little man?" Even the
substantial fact that Oliver's play would, it was hoped,
provide a financial support for his children, did not suffice
to lift it from the region of the unimportant in the mind of
his father-in-law.

"But he'll have plenty of other birthdays when papa will
be here," remarked Virginia brightly. Though she had been
a little hurt to find that Oliver had arranged to leave home
the night before, and that he had appeared perfectly blind
to the importance of his presence at Harry's celebration,
her native good sense had not permitted her to make a
grievance out of the matter. On her wedding day she had
resolved that she would not be exacting of Oliver's time or
attention, and the sweetness of her disposition had
smoothed away any difficulties which had intervened
between her and her ideal of wifehood. From the first, love
had meant to her the opportunity of giving rather than the
privilege of receiving, and her failure to regard herself as of
supreme consequence in any situation had protected her
from the minor troubles and disillusionments of marriage.

"It is too bad to think that dear Oliver will have to be
away for two whole weeks," said Mrs. Pendleton.

"Is he obliged to stay that long?" asked the rector,
sympathetically. Never having missed an anniversary since
the war, he could look upon Oliver's absence as a fit
subject for condolence.

"He can't possibly come home until the play is
produced, and that won't be for two weeks yet," replied
Virginia.

"But I thought it rested with the actors now. Couldn't
they go on just as well without him?"

"He thinks not, and, of course, it is such a great play
that he doesn't want to take any risks with it."

"Of course he doesn't," assented Mrs. Pendleton, who
had believed that the stage was immoral until Virginia's
husband began to write for it.

"I know he'll come back the very first minute that he can
get away," said Virginia with conviction, before she
stooped to comfort Harry, who was depressed by the
discovery that he was not expected to eat his entire cake,
but instantly hopeful when he was promised a slice of sister
Lucy's in the summer.

Late in the afternoon, when the children, warmly
wrapped in extra shawls by Mrs. Pendleton, were led
back through the cold to the house in Prince Street, one
and all of the party agreed that it was the nicest birthday
that had ever been. "I like grandma's cake better than our
cake," announced Harry above his white muffler. "Why
can't we have cake like that, mamma?"

He was trotting sturdily, with his hand in Virginia's,
behind the perambulator, which contained a much muffled
Jenny, and at his words Mrs. Pendleton, who walked a
little ahead, turned suddenly and hugged him tight for an
instant.

"Just listen to the darling boy!" she exclaimed, in a
choking voice.

"Because nobody else can make such good cake as
grandma's," answered Virginia, quite as pleased as her
mother. "And she's going to give you one every birthday as
long as you live."

On the hall table there was a telegram from Oliver, and
Virginia tore it open while her mother and Marthy
unfastened the children's wraps.

"He's at the Hotel Bertram," she said joyously, "and he
says the rehearsals are going splendidly."

"Did he mention Harry's birthday?" asked Mrs.
Pendleton, trying to hide the instinctive dread which the
sight of a telegram aroused in her.

"He must have forgotten it. Can't you come upstairs to
the nursery with us, mother?"

"No, your father is all alone. I must be getting back,"
replied Mrs. Pendleton gently.

An hour or two later, when Virginia sat in her rocking-chair
before the nursery fire, with Harry, worn out with his
play and forgetful of the dignity of his four-years, asleep in
her lap, she opened the telegram again and reread it
hungrily while the light of love shone in her face. She knew
intuitively that Oliver had sent the telegram because he had
not written - and would not write, probably, until he had
finished with the hardest work of his play. It was an easy
thing to do - it took considerably less of his time than a
letter would have done; but she had inherited from her
mother the sentimental vision of life which unconsciously
magnifies the meaning of trivial attentions. She looked
through her emotions as through a prism on the simple fact
of his telegraphing, and it became immediately transfigured.
How dear it was of him to realize that she would be
anxious until she heard from him! How lonely he must be
all by himself in that great city! How much he must have
wanted to be with Harry on his birthday! Sitting there in
the fire-lit nursery, her heart sent out waves of love and

sympathy to him across the distance and the twilight. On
the rug at her feet Lucy rocked in her little chair, crooning
to her doll with the beginnings of the mother instinct already
softening her voice, and in the adjoining room Jenny lay
asleep in her crib while the faithful Marthy watched by her
side. Beyond the window a fine icy rain had begun to fall,
and down the long street she could see the lamps flickering
in revolving circles of frost. In the midst of the frozen
streets, that little centre of red firelight separated her as
completely from the other twenty-one thousand human
beings among whom she lived as did the glow of personal
joy that suffused her thoughts. From the dusk below she
heard the tapping of a blind beggar's stick on the
pavement, and the sound made, while it lasted, a plaintive
accompaniment to the lullaby she was singing. "Two whole
weeks," she thought, while her longing reached out to that
unknown room in which she pictured Oliver sitting alone.
"Two whole weeks. How hard it will be for him." In her
guarded ignorance of the world she could not imagine that
Oliver was suffering less from this enforced absence from
all he loved than she herself would have suffered had she
been in his place. Of course, men were different from
women - that ancient dogma was embodied in the leading
clause of her creed of life; but she had always understood
that this difference vanished in some miraculous way after
marriage. She knew that Oliver had to work, of
course - how otherwise could he support his family? - but
the idea that his work might ever usurp the place in his
heart that belonged to her and the children would have
been utterly incomprehensible to her had she ever thought
of it. Jealousy was an alien weed,

For a week there was no letter from Oliver, and at the
end of that time a few lines scrawled on a sheet of hotel
paper explained that he spent every minute of his time at
the theatre.

"Poor fellow, it's dreadfully hard on him, isn't it?"
Virginia said to her mother, when she showed her the
imposing picture of the hotel at the head of his letter.

There was no hint of compassion for herself in her voice.
Her pity was entirely for Oliver, constrained to be away
for two whole weeks from his children, who grew more
interesting and delightful every day that they lived. "Harry
has gone into the first reader," she added, turning from the
storeroom shelves on which she was laying strips of white
oilcloth. "He will be able to read his lesson to Oliver when
he comes home."

"I have always understood that your father could read
his Bible at the age of four," remarked Mrs. Pendleton,
who passionately treasured this solitary proof of the
rector's brilliancy.

"I am afraid Harry is backward. He hates his letters
- especially the letter A - so much that it takes me
an hour sometimes to get him to say it after me. My only
comfort is that Oliver says he couldn't read a line until he
was over seven years old. Would you scallop this oilcloth,
mother, or leave it plain?"

"I wonder?" replied Mrs. Pendleton vaguely. Then the
sound of Harry's laughter floated in suddenly from the
backyard, and her eyes, following Virginia's, turned
automatically to the pantry window.

"They've come home for a snack, I suppose?" she said.
"Shall I fix some bread and preserves for them?"

"Oh, I'll do it," responded Virginia, while she reached
for the crock of blackberry jam on the shelf at her side.

Another week passed and there was no word from
Oliver, until Mrs. Pendleton came in at dusk one evening,
with an anxious look on her face and a folded newspaper
held tightly in her hand.

"Have you seen any of the accounts of Oliver's play,
Jinny?" she asked.

"No, I haven't had time to look at the papers
today - Harry has hurt his foot."

She spoke placidly, looking up from the nursery floor,
where she knelt beside a basin of warm water at Harry's
feet. "Poor little fellow, he fell on a pile of bricks," she
added, "but he's such a hero he never even whimpered,
did he, darling?"

"But it hurt bad," said Harry eagerly.

"Of course, it hurt dreadfully, and if he hadn't been a
man he would have cried."

"Sister would have cried," exulted the hero.

"Indeed, sister would have cried. Sister is a girl,"
responded Virginia, smothering him with kisses over the
basin of water.

But Mrs. Pendleton refused to be diverted from her
purpose even by the heroism of her grandson.

"John Henry found this in a New York paper and
brought it to me. He thought you ought to see

"Serious?" repeated Virginia, letting the soapy washrag
fall back into the basin while she stretched out her moist
and reddened hand for the paper.

"It says that the play didn't go very well," pursued her
mother guardedly. "They expect to take off at once,
and - and Oliver is not well - he is ill in the hotel - "

"Ill?" cried Virginia, and as she rose to her feet the basin
upset and deluged Harry's shoes and the rug on which she
had been kneeling. Her mind, unable to grasp the
significance of a theatrical failure, had seized upon the one
salient fact which concerned her. Plays might succeed or
fail, and it made little difference, but illness was another
matter - illness was something definite and material. Illness
could neither be talked away by religion nor denied by
philosophy. It had its place in her mind not with the
shadow, but with the substance of things. It was the one
sinister force which had always dominated her, even when
it was absent, by the sheer terror it aroused in her thoughts.

"Let me see," she said chokingly. "No, I can't read
it - tell me."

"It only says that the play was a failure - nobody
understood it, and a great many people said it was - oh,
Virginia - immoral! - There's something about its being
foreign and an attack on American ideals - and then they
add that the author refused to be interviewed and they
understood that he was ill in his room at the Bertram."

The charge of immorality, which would have crushed
Virginia at another time, and which, even in the in

tense excitement of the moment, had been an added stab
to Mrs. Pendleton, was brushed aside as if it were the
pestiferous attack of an insect.

"I am going to him now - at once - when does the train
leave, mother?"

"But, Jinny, how can you? You have never been to
New York. You wouldn't know where to go."

"But he is ill. Nothing on earth is going to keep me away
from him. Will you please wipe Harry's feet while I try to
get on my clothes?"

"But, Jinny, the children?"

"You and Marthy must look after the children. Of
course I can't take them with me. Oh, Harry, won't you
please hush and let poor mamma dress? She is almost
distracted."

Something - a secret force of character which even her
mother had not suspected that she possessed - had arisen
in an instant and dominated the situation. She was no
longer the gentle and doting mother of a minute ago, but a
creature of a fixed purpose and an iron resolution. Even
her face appeared to lose its soft contour and hardened
until Mrs. Pendleton grew almost frightened. Never had
she imagined that Virginia could look like this.

"I am sure there is some mistake about it. Don't take it
so terribly to heart, Jinny," she pleaded, while she knelt
down, cowed and obedient, to wipe Harry's feet.

Virginia, who had already torn off her house dress, and
was hurriedly buttoning the navy blue waist in which she
had travelled, looked at her calmly without pausing for an
instant in her task.

asked. "There's an old handkerchief in my work basket. I
want you and father to come here and stay until I get back.
It will be less trouble than moving all their things over to the
rectory."

"Very well, darling," replied Mrs. Pendleton meekly.
"We'll do everything that we can, of course," and she
added timidly, "Have you money enough?"

"I have thirty dollars. I just got it out of the bank to-day
to pay Marthy and my housekeeping bills. Do you think
that will be as much as I'll need?"

"I should think so, dear. Of course, if you find you want
more, you can telegraph your father."

"The train doesn't leave for two hours, so I'll have plenty
of time to get ready. It's just half-past six now, and Oliver
didn't leave the house till eight o'clock."

"Won't you take a little something to eat before you go?"

"I couldn't swallow a morsel, but I'll sit with you and the
children as soon as I've put the things in my satchel. I
couldn't possibly need but this one dress, could I? If Oliver
isn't really ill, I hope we can start home to-morrow. That
will be two nights that I'll spend away. Oh, mother, ask
father to pray that he won't be ill."

Her voice broke, but she fiercely bit back the sob
before it escaped her lips.

"I will, dear, I promise you. We will both think of you
and pray for you every minute. Jinny, are you sure it's
wise? Couldn't we send some one - John Henry would
go, I know - in your place?"

me. Whatever happens, I am going." Then she sobbed
outright. "He wanted me to go with him at first, and I
wouldn't because I thought it was my duty to stay at home
with the children. If anything should happen to him, I'd
never forgive myself."

She was slipping her black cloth skirt over her head as
she spoke, and her terror-stricken face disappeared under
the pleats before Mrs. Pendleton could turn to look at her.
When her head emerged again above the belt of her skirt,
the expression of her features had grown more natural.

"You'll go down in a carriage, won't you?" inquired her
mother, whose mind achieved that perfect mixture of the
sentimental and the practical which is rarely found in any
except Southern women.

"I suppose I'll have to. Then I can take my satchel with
me, and that will save trouble. You won't forget, mother,
that I give Lucy a teaspoonful of cod-liver oil after each
meal, will you? She has had that hacking cough for three
weeks, and I want to break it up."

"I'll remember, Jinny, but I'm so miserable about your
going alone."

Turning to the closet, Virginia unearthed an old black
satchel from beneath a pile of toys, and began dusting it
inside with a towel. Then she took out some underclothes
from a bureau drawer and a few toilet articles, which she
wrapped in pieces of tissue paper. Her movements were
so methodical that the nervousness in Mrs. Pendleton's
mind slowly gave way to astonishment. For the first time in
her life, perhaps, the mother realized that her daughter was
no longer a child, but a woman, and a woman whose
character was as strong and as determined as her own. Vaguely

she understood, without analyzing the motives that moved
Virginia, that this strength and this determination which so
impressed her had arisen from those deep places in her
daughter's soul where emotion and not thought had its
source. Love was guiding her now as surely as it had
guided her when she had refused to go with Oliver to New
York, or when, but a few minutes ago, she had knelt down
to wash and bandage Harry's little earth-stained feet. It
was the only power to which she would ever surrender.
No other principle would ever direct or control her.

Marthy, who appeared with Jenny's supper, was sent
out to order the carriage and to bear a message to the
rector, and Virginia took the little girl in her lap and began
to crumble the bread into the bowl of milk.

"Wouldn't you like me to do that, dear?" asked Mrs.
Pendleton, with a submission in her tone which she had
never used before except to the rector. "Don't you want to
fix your hair over?"

"Oh, no, I'll keep on my hat till I go to bed, so it doesn't
matter. I'd rather you'd finish my packing if you don't
mind. There's nothing more to go in except some collars
and my bedroom slippers and that red wrapper hanging
behind the door in the closet."

"Are you going to take any medicine?"

"Only that bottle of camphor and some mustard
plasters. Yes, you'd better put in the brandy flask and the
aromatic ammonia. You can never tell when you will need
them. Now, my darlings, mother is going away and you
must keep well and be as good as gold until she comes
back."

To the amazement of Mrs. Pendleton (who reflected
that you really never knew what to expect of children),

this appeal produced an immediate and extraordinary
result. Lucy, who had been fidgeting about and trying to
help with the packing, became suddenly solemn and
dignified, while an ennobling excitement mounted to Harry's
face. Never particularly obedient before, they became, as
soon as the words were uttered, as amenable as angels.
Even Jenny stopped feeding long enough to raise herself
and pat her mother's cheek with ten caressing, milky
fingers.

"Mother's going away," said Lucy in a solemn voice,
and a hush fell on the three of them.

"And grandma's coming here to live," added Harry after
the silence had grown so depressing that Virginia had
started to cry.

"Not to live, precious," corrected Mrs. Pendleton
quickly. "Just to spend two days with you. Mother will be
home in two days."

"Mother will be home in two days," repeated Lucy.
"May I stay away from school while you're away, mamma?"

"And may I stop learning my letters?" asked Harry.

"No, darlings, you must do just as if I were here.
Grandma will take care of you. Now promise me that you
will be good."

They promised obediently, awed to submission by the
stupendous importance of the change. It is probable that
they would have observed with less surprise any
miraculous upheaval in the orderly phenomena of nature.

"I don't see how I can possibly leave them - they are
so good, and they behave exactly as if they realized
how anxious I am," wept Virginia, breaking down

when Marthy came to announce that the rector had come
and the carriage was at the door.

"Suppose you give it up, Jinny. I - I'll send your father,"
pleaded Mrs. Pendleton, in desperation as she watched the
tragedy of the parting.

But that strange force which the situation had developed
in Virginia yielded neither to her mother's prayers nor to the
last despairing wails of the children, who realized, at the
sight of the black bag in Marthy's hands, that their
providence was actually deserting them. The deepest of her
instincts - the instinct that was at the root of all her mother
love - was threatened, and she rose to battle. The thing she
loved best, she had learned, was neither husband nor child,
but the one that needed her.

CHAPTER V
FAILURE
SHE had lain down in her
clothes, impelled by the feeling
that if there were to be a wreck she should prefer to
appear completely dressed; so when the chill dawn came
at last and the train pulled into Jersey City, she had nothing
to do except to adjust her veil and wait patiently until the
porter came for her bag. His colour, which was black,
inspired her with confidence, and she followed him
trustfully to the platform, where he delivered her to another
smiling member of his race. The cold was so penetrating
that her teeth began to chatter as she turned to obey the
orders of the dusky official who had assumed command of
her. Never had she felt anything so bleak as the
atmosphere of the station. Never in her life had she been so
lonely as she was while she hurried down the long dim
platform in the direction of a gate which looked as if it led
into a prison. She was chilled through; her skin felt as if it
had turned to india rubber; there was a sickening terror in
her soul; and she longed above all things to sit down on
one of the inhospitable tracks and burst into tears; but
something stronger than impulse urged her shivering body
onward and controlled the twitching muscles about her
mouth. "In a few minutes I shall see Oliver. Oliver is ill and
I am going to him," she repeated
Page 281

over and over to herself as if she were reciting a prayer.

Inside the station she declined the offer of breakfast, and
was conducted to the ferry, where she was obliged to run
in order to catch the boat that was just leaving. Seated on
one of the long benches in the saloon, with her bag at her
feet and her umbrella grasped tightly in her hand, she gazed
helplessly at the other passengers and wondered if any one
of them would tell her what to do when she reached the
opposite side. The women, she thought, looked hard and
harassed, and the men she could not see because of the
rows of newspapers behind which they were hidden. Once
her wandering gaze caught the eyes of a middle-aged
woman in rusty black, who smiled at her above the head of
a sleeping child.

"That's a pretty woman," said a man carelessly, as he put
down his paper, and she realized that he was talking about
her to his companion. Then, as the terrible outlines of the
city grew more distinct on the horizon, he got up and
strolled as carelessly past her to the deck. He had spoken
of her as indifferently as he might have spoken of the
weather.

As the tremendous battlements (which were not
tremendous to any of the other passengers) emerged
slowly from the mist and cleft the sombre low-hanging
clouds, from which a few flakes of snow fell, her terror
vanished suddenly before the excitement which ran
through her body. She forgot her hunger, her loneliness,
her shivering flesh, her benumbed and aching feet. A
sensation not unlike the one with which the rector had
marched into his first battle, fortified and exhilarated her.
The fighting blood of

of her ancestors grew warm in her veins. New York
developed suddenly from a mere spot on a map into a
romance made into brick; and when a ray of sunlight
pierced the heavy fog, and lay like a white wing aslant the
few falling snowflakes, it seemed to her that the shadowy
buildings lost their sinister aspect and softened into a
haunting and mysterious beauty. Somewhere in that place
of mystery and adventure Oliver was waiting for her! He
was a part of that vast movement of life into which she was
going. Then, youth, from which hope is never long absent,
flamed up in her, and she was glad that she was still
beautiful enough to cause strangers to turn and look at her.

But this mood, also, passed quickly, and a little later,
while she rolled through the grey streets, into which the
slant sunbeams could bring no colour, she surrendered
again to that terror of the unknown which had seized her
when she stood in the station. The beauty had departed
from the buildings; the pavements were dirty; the little
discoloured piles of snow made the crossings slippery and
dangerous; and she held her breath as they passed through
the crowded streets on the west side, overcome by the
fear of "catching" some malign malady from the smells and
the filth. The negro quarters in Dinwiddie were dirty
enough, but not, she thought with a kind of triumph, quite
so dirty as New York. When the cab turned into Fifth
Avenue, she took her handkerchief from her nostrils; but
this imposing street, which had not yet emerged from its
evil dream of Victorian brownstone, impressed her chiefly
as a place of a thousand prisons. It was impossible to
believe that those frowning walls, undecorated

by a creeper or the shadow of a tree, could really
be homes where people lived and children were born.

At first she had gazed with a childish interest and
curiosity on the houses she was passing; then the sense of
strangeness gave place presently to the exigent necessity of
reaching Oliver as soon as possible. But the driver
appeared indifferent to her timid taps on the glass at his
back, while the horse progressed with the feeble activity of
one who had spent a quarter of a century ineffectually
making an effort. Her impatience, which she had at first
kept under control, began to run in quivers of nervousness
through her limbs. The very richness of her personal life,
which had condensed all experience into a single emotional
centre, and restricted her vision of the universe to that
solitary window of the soul through which she looked,
prevented her now from seeing in the city anything except
the dreary background of Oliver's illness and failure. The
naïve wonder with which she had watched the gigantic
outlines shape themselves out of the white fog, had faded
utterly from her mind. She ached with longing to reach
Oliver and to find him well enough to take the first train
back to Dinwiddie.

At the hotel her bag and umbrella were wrested from
her by an imperious uniformed attendant, and in what
seemed to her an incredibly short space of time, she was
following him along a velvet lined corridor on the tenth
floor. The swift ascent in the elevator had made her dizzy,
and the physical sensation reminded her that she was weak
for food. Then the attendant rapped imperatively at a door
just beyond a shining staircase, and she forgot herself as
completely as it had been her habit to do since her
marriage.

"Come in!" responded a muffled voice on the inside,
and as the door swung open, she saw Oliver, in his
dressing-gown, and with an unshaved face, reading a
newspaper beside a table on which stood an untasted cup
of coffee.

"I didn't ring," he began impatiently, and then starting to
his feet, he uttered her name in a voice which held her
standing as if she were suddenly paralyzed on the
threshold. "Virginia!"

A sob rose in her throat, and her faltering gaze passed
from him to the hotel attendant, who responded to her
unspoken appeal as readily as if it were a part of his
regular business. Pushing her gently inside, he placed her
bag and umbrella on an empty chair, took up the breakfast
tray from the table, and inquired, with a kindness which
strangely humbled her, if she wished to give an order.
When she had helplessly shaken her head, he bowed and
went out, closing the door softly upon their meeting.

"What in thunder, Virginia?" began Oliver, and she
realized that he was angry.

"I heard you were sick - that the play had failed. I was
so sorry I hadn't come with you - " she explained; and
then, understanding for the first time the utter foolishness of
what she had done, she put her hands up to her face and
burst into tears.

He had risen from his chair, but he made no movement
to come nearer to her, and when she took down her hands
in order to wipe her eyes, she saw an expression in his face
which frightened her by its strangeness. She had caught him
when that guard which every human being - even a
husband - wears, had fallen away, though in her ignorance
it seemed to her that

he had become suddenly another person. That she had
entered into one of those awful hours of self-realization,
when the soul must face its limitations alone and make its
readjustments in silence, did not occur to her, because she,
who had lived every minute of her life under the eyes of her
parents or her children, could have no comprehension of
the hunger for solitude which was devouring Oliver's heart.
She saw merely that he did not want her - that she had not
only startled, but angered him by coming; and the
bitterness of that instant seemed to her more than she was
able to bear. Something had changed him; he was older, he
was harder, he was embittered.

"I - I am so sorry," she stammered; and because even in
the agony of this moment she could not think long of
herself, she added almost humbly, "Would you rather that I
should go back again?" Then, by the haggard look of his
face as he turned away from her towards the window, she
saw that he, also, was suffering, and her soul yearned over
him as it had yearned over Harry when he had had the
toothache. "Oh, Oliver!" she cried, and again, "Oh,
Oliver. won't you let me help you?"

But he was in the mood of despairing humiliation when
one may support abuse better than pity. His failure, he
knew, had been undeserved, and he was still smarting from
the injustice of it as from the blows of a whip. For twenty-four
hours his nerves had been on the rack, and his one
desire had been to hide himself in the spiritual nakedness to
which he was stripped. Had he been obliged to choose a
witness to his suffering, it is probable that he would have
selected a stranger from the street rather than his wife. The one

thing that could have helped him, an intelligent justification
of his work, she was powerless to give. In his need she
had nothing except love to offer; and love, she felt
instinctively, was not the balm for his wound.

Afraid and yet passionately longing to meet his eyes, she
let her gaze fall away from him and wander timidly, as if
uncertain where to rest, about the disordered room, with
its dull red walls, its cheap Nottingham lace curtains tied
back with cords, its elaborately carved walnut furniture,
and its litter of days old newspapers upon the bed. She
saw his neckties hanging in an uneven row over the oblong
mirror, and she controlled a nervous impulse to straighten
them out and put them away.

"Why didn't you telegraph me?" he asked, after a pause
in which she had struggled vainly to look as if it were the
most natural thing in the world that he should receive her in
this way. "If I had known you were coming, I should have
met you."

"Father wanted to, but I wouldn't let him," she
answered. "I - I thought you were sick."

In spite of his despair, it is probable that at the moment
she was suffering more than he was - since a wound to
love strikes deeper, after all, than a wound to ambition.
Where she had expected to find her husband, she felt
vaguely that she had encountered a stranger, and she was
overwhelmed by that sense of irremediable loss which
follows the discovery of terrible and unfamiliar qualities in
those whom we have known and loved intimately for
years. The fact that he was plainly struggling to disguise his
annoyance, that he was trying as hard as she to assume a
manner he did not feel, only added a sardonic humour to
poignant tragedy.

"Have you had anything to eat?" he asked abruptly,
and remembering that he had not kissed her when she
entered, he put his arm about her and brushed her cheek
with his lips.

"No, I waited to breakfast with you. I was in such a
hurry to get here."

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, and going over to the bell, he
touched it with the manner of a man who is delighted that
anything so perfectly practical as food exists in the world.

While he was speaking to the waiter, she took off her
hat, and washed the stains of smoke and tears from her
face. Her hair was a sight, she thought, but while she gazed
back at her stricken eyes in the little mirror over the
washstand, she recalled with a throb of gratitude that the
stranger on the boat had said she was pretty. She felt so
humble that she clung almost with desperation to the
thought that Oliver always liked to have people admire her.

When she turned from the washstand, he was reading
the newspaper again, and he put it aside with a forced
cheerfulness to arrange the table for breakfast.

"Aren't you going to have something too?" she asked,
looking disconsolately at the tray, for all her hunger had
departed. If he would only be natural she felt that she
could bear anything! If he would only stop trying to
pretend that he was not miserable and that nothing had
happened! After all, it couldn't be so very bad, could it? It
wasn't in the least as if one of the children were ill.

She poured out a cup of coffee for him before drinking
her own, and putting it down on the table at his side,
waited patiently until he should look up again from his

paper. A lump as hard as lead had risen in her throat and
was choking her.

"Are the children well?" he asked presently, and she
answered with an affected brightness more harrowing than
tears, "Yes, mother is taking care of them. Lucy still has
the little cough, but I'm giving her cod-liver oil. And, what
do you think? I have a surprise for you. Harry can read the
first lesson in his reader."

He smiled kindly back at her, but from the vacancy in his
face, she realized that he had not taken in a word that she
had said. His trouble, whatever it was, could absorb him so
utterly that he had ceased even to be interested in his
children. He, who had borne so calmly the loss of that
day-old baby for whom she had grieved herself to a shadow,
was plunged into this condition of abject hopelessness
merely because his play was a failure! It was not only
impossible for her to share his suffering; she realized, while
she watched him, that she could not so much as
comprehend it. Her limitations, of which she had never
been acutely conscious until to-day, appeared suddenly
insurmountable. Love, which had seemed to her to solve all
problems and to smooth all difficulties, was helpless to
enlighten her. It was not love - it was something else that
she needed now, and of this something else she knew not
even so much as the name.

She drank her coffee quickly, fearing that if she did not
take food she should lose control of herself and anger him
by a display of hysterics.

"I don't wonder you couldn't drink your coffee," she
said with a quivering little laugh. "It must have been made
yesterday." Then, unable to bear the

strain any longer, she cried out sharply: "Oh, Oliver, won't
you tell me what is the matter?"

His look grew hard, while a spasm of irritation
contracted his mouth.

"There's nothing you need worry about - except that
I've borrowed money, and I'm afraid we'll have to cut
down things a bit until I manage to pay it back."

"Why, of course we'll cut down things," she almost
laughed in her relief. "We can live on a great deal less, and
I'll market so carefully that you will hardly know the
difference. I'll put Marthy in the kitchen and take care of
the children myself. It won't be the least bit of trouble."

She knew by his face that he was grateful to her, though
he said merely: "I'm a little knocked up, I suppose, so you
mustn't mind. I've got a beast of a headache. Martin is
going to take 'The Beaten Road' off at the end of the
week, you know, and he doesn't think now that he will
produce the other. There wasn't a good word for me from
the critics, and yet, damn them, I know that the play is the
best one that's ever come out of America. But it's
real - that's why they fell foul of it - it isn't
stuffed with sugar plums."

"Why, what in the world possessed them?" she returned
indignantly. "It is a beautiful play."

She saw him flinch at the word, and the sombre irritation
which his outburst had relieved for a minute, settled
again on his features. Her praise, she understood, only
exasperated him, though she did not realize that it was the
lack of discrimination in it which aroused his irritation. At
the moment, intelligent appreciation of his work would have
been bread and

meat to him, but her pitiful attempts at flattery were like
bungling touches on raw flesh. Had he written the veriest
rags of sentimental rubbish, he knew she would as
passionately have defended their "beauty."

"I'll get dressed quickly and look after some business,"
he said, "and we'll go home to-night."

Her eyes shone, and she began to eat her eggs with a
resolution born of the consoling memory of Dinwiddie. If
only they could be at home again with the children, she felt
that all this trouble and misunderstanding would vanish.
With a strange confusion of ideas, it seemed to her that
Oliver's suffering had been in some mysterious way
produced by New York, and that it existed merely within
the circumscribed limits of this dreadful city.

"Oh, Oliver, that will be lovely!" she exclaimed, and
tried to subdue the note of joy in her voice.

"I shan't be able to get back to lunch, I'm afraid. What
will you do about it?"

"Don't bother about me, dearest. I'll dress and take a
little walk just to see what Fifth Avenue is like. I can't get
lost if I go perfectly straight up the street, can I?"

"Fifth Avenue is only a block away. You can't miss it.
Now I'll hurry and be off."

She knew that he was anxious to be alone, and so firmly
was she convinced that this mood of detachment would
leave him as soon as he was in the midst of his family
again, that she was able to smile tolerantly when he kissed
her hastily, and seizing his hat, rushed from the room. For
a time after he had gone she amused herself putting his
things in order and packing the little tin trunk he had
brought with him;

but the red walls and the steam heat in the room sickened
her at last, and when she had bathed and dressed and there
seemed nothing left for her to do except get out her
work-bag and begin darning his socks, she decided that she
would put on her hat and go out for a walk. It did not
occur to her to feel hurt by the casual manner in which
Oliver had shifted the responsibility of her
presence - partly owing to a personal inability to take a
selfish point of view about anything, and partly because of
that racial habit of making allowances for the male in which
she had been sedulously trained from her infancy.

At the door the porter directed her to Fifth Avenue, and
she ventured cautiously as far as the flowing rivulet at the
corner, where she would probably have stood until Oliver's
return, if a friendly policeman had not observed her
stranded helplessness and assisted her over. "How on earth
am I to get back again?" she thought, smiling up at him; and
this anxiety engrossed her so completely that for a minute
she forgot to look at the amazing buildings and the curious
crowds that hurried frantically in their shadows. Then a
pale finger of sunlight pointed suddenly across the high
roofs in front of her, and awed, in spite of her
preoccupation, by the strangeness of the scene, she
stopped and watched the moving carriages in the middle of
the street and the never ending stream of people that
passed on the wet pavements. Occasionally, while she
stood there, some of the passers-by would turn and look at
her with friendly admiring eyes, as though they found
something pleasant in her lovely wistful face and her
old-fashioned clothes; and this pleased her so much that she
lost her feeling of loneliness. It was a kindly

crowd, and because she was young and pretty and worth
looking at, a part of the exhilaration of this unknown life
passed into her, and she felt for a little while as though she
belonged to it. The youth in her responded to the passing
call of the streets, to this call which fluted like the sound of
pipes in her blood, and lifted her for a moment out of the
narrow track of individual experience. It was charming to
feel that all these strangers looked kindly upon her, and she
tried to show that she returned their interest by letting a little
cordial light shine in her eyes. For the first time in her life
the personal boundaries of sympathy fell away from her,
and she realized, in a fleeting sensation, something of the
vast underlying solidarity of human existence. A humble
baby in a go-cart waited at one of the crossings for the
traffic to pass, and bending over, she hugged him
ecstatically, not because he reminded her of Harry, but
simply because he was a baby.

"He is so sweet I just had to squeeze him," she said to
his mother, a working woman in a black shawl, who stood
behind him.

Then the two women smiled at each other in that
freemasonry of motherhood of which no man is aware, and
Virginia wondered why people had ever foolishly written of
the "indifference of a crowd." The chill which had lain over
her heart since her meeting with Oliver melted utterly in the
glow with which she had embraced the baby at the
crossing. With the feeling of his warm little body in her
arms, everything had become suddenly right again. New
York was no longer a dreadful city, and Oliver's failure
appeared as brief as the passing pang of a toothache. Her
natural optimism had returned like a rosy mist to embellish

and obscure the prosaic details of the situation. Like the
cheerful winter sunshine, which transfigured the harsh
outlines of the houses, her vision adorned the reality in the
mere act of beholding it.

Midway of the next block there was a jeweller's window
full of gems set in intricate patterns, and stopping before it,
she studied the trinkets carefully in the hope of being able
to describe them to Lucy. Then a man selling little
automatic pigs at the corner attracted her attention, and she
bought two for Harry and Jenny, and carried them
triumphantly away in boxes under her arm. She knew that
she looked countrified and old-fashioned, and that nobody
she met was wearing either a hat or a dress which in the
least resembled the style of hers; but the knowledge of this
did not trouble her, because in her heart she preferred the
kind of clothes which were worn in Dinwiddie. The women
in New York seemed to her artificial and affected in
appearance, and they walked, she thought, as if they were
trying to make people look at them. The bold way they
laced in their figures she regarded as almost indecent, and
she noticed that they looked straight into the eyes of men
instead of lowering their lashes when they passed them.
Her provincialism, like everything else which belonged to
her and had become endeared by habit and association,
seemed to her so truly beautiful and desirable that she
would not have parted with it for worlds.

Turning presently, she walked down Fifth Avenue as far
as Twenty-third Street, and then, confused by the crossing,
she passed into Broadway, without knowing that it was
Broadway, until she was enlightened by a stranger to
whom she appealed. When she began to

retrace her steps, she discovered that she was hungry, and
she longed to go into one of the places where she saw
people eating at little tables; but her terror of what she had
heard of the high prices of food in New York restaurants
restrained her. General Goode still told of paying six dollars
and a half for a dinner he had ordered in a hotel in Fifth
Avenue, and her temperamental frugality, reinforced by
anxiety as to Oliver's debts, preferred to take no
unnecessary risks with the small amount in her pocket
book. Oliver, of course, would have laughed at her petty
economies, and have ordered recklessly whatever attracted
his appetite; but, as she gently reminded herself again, men
were different. On the whole, this lordly prodigality pleased
her rather than otherwise. She felt that it was in keeping
with the bigness and the virility of the masculine ideal; and if
there were pinching and scraping to be done, she
immeasurably preferred that it should fall to her lot to do it
and not to Oliver's.

At the hotel she found that Oliver had not come in, and
after a belated luncheon of tea and toast in the dining-room,
she went upstairs and sat down to watch for his
return between the Nottingham lace curtains at the
window. From the terrific height, on which she felt like a
sparrow, she could see a row of miniature puppets passing
back and forth at the corner of Fifth Avenue. For hours she
tried in vain to distinguish the figure of Oliver in the swiftly
moving throng, and in spite of herself she could not repress
a feeling of pleasant excitement. She knew that Oliver
would think that she ought to be depressed by his failure,
yet she could not prevent the return of a childlike

confidence in the profound goodness of life. Everything
would be right, everything was eternally bound to be right
from the beginning. That inherited casuistry of
temperament, which had confused the pleasant with the
true for generations, had become in her less a moral
conviction than a fixed quality of soul. To dwell even for a
minute on "the dark side of things" awoke in her the same
instinct of mortal sin that she had felt at the discovery that
Oliver was accustomed to "break" the Sabbath by reading
profane literature.

When, at last, as the dusk fell in the room, she heard his
hasty step in the corridor, a wave of joyful expectancy rose
in her heart and trembled for utterance on her lips. Then the
door opened; he came from the gloom into the pale gleam
of light that shone in from the window, and with her first
look into his face her rising joy ebbed quickly away. A new
element, something for which neither her training nor her
experience had prepared her, entered at that instant into
her life. Not the external world, but the sacred inner circle
in which they had loved and known each other was
suddenly clouded. Everything outside of this was the same,
but the fact confronted her there as grimly as a physical
sore. The evil struck at the very heart of her love, since it
was not life, but Oliver that had changed.

CHAPTER VI
THE SHADOW
OLIVER had changed; for
months this thought had lain
like a stone on her heart. She went about her life just as
usual, yet never for an instant during that long winter and
spring did she lose consciousness of its dreadful presence.
It was the first thing to face her in the morning, the last thing
from which she turned when, worn out with perplexity, she
fell asleep at night. During the day the children took her
thoughts away from it for hours, but never once, not even
while she heard Harry's lessons or tied the pink or the blue
bows in Lucy's and Jenny's curls, did she ever really forget
it. Since the failure of Oliver's play, which had seemed to
her such a little thing in itself, something had gone out of
their marriage, and this something was the perfect
understanding which had existed between them. There
were times when her sympathy appeared to her almost to
infuriate him. Even her efforts towards economy - for since
their return from New York she had put Marthy into the
kitchen and had taken entire charge of the
children - irritated rather than pleased him. And the more
she irritated him, the more she sought zealously, by
innumerable small attentions, to please and to pacify him.
Instead of leaving him in the solitude which he sought, and
which might have restored him to his normal balance of
mind, she
Page 297

became possessed, whenever he shut himself in his study
or went alone for a walk, with a frenzied dread lest he
should permit himself to "brood" over the financial
difficulties in which the wreck of his ambition had placed
them. She, who feared loneliness as if it were the smallpox,
devised a thousand innocent deceptions by which she might
break in upon him when he sat in his study and discover
whether he was actually reading the papers or merely
pretending to do so. In her natural simplicity, it never
occurred to her to penetrate beneath the surface
disturbances of his mood. These engrossed her so completely
that the cause of them was almost forgotten. Dimly she realized
that this strange, almost physical soreness, which made him
shrink from her presence as a man with weak eyes shrinks
from the light, was the outward sign of a secret violence in
his soul, yet she ministered helplessly to each passing
explosion of temper as if it were the cause instead of the
result of his suffering. Introspection, which had lain under a
moral ban in a society that assumed the existence of an
unholy alliance between the secret and the evil, could not
help her because she had never indulged in it. Partly
because of the ingenuous candour of the Pendleton nature,
and partly owing to the mildness of a climate which made it
more comfortable for Dinwiddians to live for six months of
the year on their front porches and with their windows
open, she shared the ingrained Southern distrust of any
state of mind which could not cheerfully support the
observation of the neighbours. She knew that he had turned
from his work with disgust, and if he wasn't working and
wasn't reading, what on earth could he be doing alone
unless he had, as she imagined

in desperation, begun wilfully to "nurse his despondency?"
Even the rector couldn't help her here - for his knowledge
of character was strictly limited to the types of the soldier
and the churchman, and his son-in-law did not belong, he
admitted, in either of these familiar classifications. At the
bottom of his soul the good man had always entertained for
Oliver something of the kindly contempt with which his
generation regarded a healthy male, who, it suspected,
would decline either to preach a sermon or to kill a man in
the cause of morality. But on one line of treatment father
and daughter were passionately agreed - whatever
happened, it was not good that Oliver should be left by
himself for a minute. When he was in the bank, of course,
where Cyrus had found him a place as a clerk on an
insignificant salary, it might be safely assumed that he was
cheered by the unfailing company of his fellow-workers;
but when he came home, the responsibility of his distraction
and his cure rested upon Virginia and the children. And
since her opinion of her own power to entertain was
modest, she fell back with a sublime confidence on the
unrivalled brilliancy and the infinite variety of the children's
prattle. During the spring, as he grew more and more
indifferent and depressed, she arranged that the children
should be with him every instant while he was in the house.
She brought Jenny's high chair to the table in order that the
adorable infant might breakfast with her father; she kept
Harry up an hour later at night so that he might add the
gaiety of his innocent mirth to their otherwise long and silent
evenings. Though she would have given anything to drop
into bed as soon as the babies were undressed, she

forced herself to sit up without yawning until Oliver
turned out the lights, bolted the door, and remarked
irritably that she ought to have been asleep hours ago.

"You aren't used to sitting up so late, Virginia; it makes
you dark under the eyes," he said one June night as he
came in from the porch where he had been to look up at
the stars.

"But I can't go to bed until you do, darling. I get so
worried about you," she answered.

"Why in heaven's name, should you worry about me? I
am all right," he responded crossly.

She saw her mistake, and with her unvarying sweetness,
set out to rectify it.

"Of course, I know you are - but we have so little time
together that I don't want to miss the evenings."

"So little!" he echoed, not unkindly, but in simple
astonishment.

"I mean the children sit up late now, and of course we
can't talk while they are playing in the room."

"Don't you think you might get them to bed earlier? They
are becoming rather a nuisance, aren't they?"

He said it kindly enough, yet tears rushed to her eyes as
she looked at him. It was impossible for her to conceive of
any mood in which the children would become "rather a
nuisance" to her, and the words hurt her more than he was
ever to know. It seemed the last straw that she could not
bear, said her heart as she turned away from him. She had
borne the extra work without a complaint; she had pinched
and scraped, if not happily, at least with a smile; she had
sat up while her limbs ached with fatigue and the longing to
be in bed - and all these things were as nothing to the
tragic confession that the children had become

"rather a nuisance." Of the many trials she had had to
endure, this, she told herself, was the bitterest.

Though her feet burned and her muscles throbbed with
fatigue, she lay awake for hours, with her eyes wide open in
the moonlight. All the small harassing duties of the morrow,
which usually swarmed like startled bees through her
brain at night, were scattered now by this vague terror
which assumed no definite shape. The delicacy of Lucy's
chest, Harry's stubborn refusal to learn to spell, and even
the harrowing certainty that the children's appetites were
fast outstripping the frugal fare she provided - these stinging
worries had flown before a new anxiety which was the
more poignant, she felt, because she could not give it a
name. The Pendleton idealism was powerless to dispel this
malign shadow which corresponded so closely to that
substance of evil whose very existence the Pendleton
idealism eternally denied. To battle with a delusion was
virtually to admit one's belief in its actuality, and this, she
reflected passionately, lying awake there in the darkness,
was the last thing she was prepared at the moment to do.
Oliver was changed, and yet her duty was plainly to fortify
herself with the consoling assurance that, whatever
happened, Oliver could never really change. Deep down in
her that essential fibre of her being which was her
soul - which drew its vitality from the racial structure of
which it was a part, and yet which distinguished and
separated her from every other person and object in the
universe - this essential fibre was compacted of
innumerable Pendleton refusals to face the reality. Even with
Lucy's chest and Harry's lessons and the cost of food, she
had always felt a soothing conviction

that by thinking hard enough about them she
could make them every one come out right in the morning.
As a normal human being in a world which was not planned
on altruistic principles, it was out of the question that she
should entirely escape an occasional hour of despondency;
but with the narrow outlook of women who lead intense
personal lives, it would have been impossible for her to see
anything really wrong in the universe while Oliver and all the
children were well. God was in His heaven as long as the
affairs of her household worked together for good. "It can't
be that he is different - I must have imagined it," she
thought now, breathing softly lest she should disturb the
sleeping Oliver. "It is natural that he should be worried
about his debts, and the failure of the play went very hard
with him, of course - but if he appears at times to have
grown bitter, it must be only that I have come to exact too
much of him. I oughtn't to expect him to take the same
interest in the children that I do - "

Then, rising softly on her elbow, she smoothed the sheet
over Jenny's dimpled little body, and bent her ear
downward to make sure that the child was breathing
naturally in her sleep. In spite of her depression that rosy
face framed in hair like spun yellow silk, aroused in her a
feeling of ecstasy. Whenever she looked at one of her
children - at her youngest child especially - her maternal
passion seemed to turn to flame in her blood. Even first
love had not been so exquisitely satisfying, so interwoven
of all imaginable secret meanings of bliss. Jenny's thumb
was in her mouth, and removing it gently, Virginia bent
lower and laid her hot cheek on the soft shining curls. Some

vital power, an emanation from that single principle
of Love which ruled her life, passed from the breath of the
sleeping child into her body. Peace descended upon her,
swift and merciful like sleep and turning on her side, she lay
with her hand on Jenny's crib, as though in clinging to her
child she clung to all that was most worth while in the
universe.

The next night Oliver telephoned from the Treadwells'
that he would not be home to supper, and when he came
in at eleven o'clock, he appeared annoyed to find her
sitting up for him.

"You ought to have gone to bed, Virginia. You look
positively haggard," he said.

"I wasn't sleepy. Mother came in for a few minutes, and
we put the children to bed. Jenny wanted to say good-night
to you, and she cried when I told her you had gone out.
I believe she loves you better than she does anybody in the
world, Oliver."

He smiled with something of the casual brilliancy which
had first captivated her imagination. In spite of the
melancholy which had clouded his charm of late, he had
lost neither his glow of physical well-being nor the look of
abounding intellectual energy which distinguished him from
all other men whom she knew. It was this intellectual
energy, she sometimes thought, which purified his
character of that vein of earthiness which she had looked
upon as the natural, and therefore the pardonable, attribute
of masculine human nature.

"If she keeps her looks, she'll leave her mother behind
some day," he answered. "You need a new dress, Jinny. I
hate that old waist and skirt. Why don't you wear the
swishy blue silk I always liked on you?"

dress to wear to Lily Carrington's birthday party, and
I didn't want to buy one. It looks ever so nice on her."

"Doubtless, but I like it better on you."

"It doesn't matter what I wear, but Lucy is so fond of
pretty things, and children dress more now than they used
to do. What did Susan have to say?"

He had turned to bolt the front door, and while his back
was towards her, she raised her hand to smother a yawn.
All day she had been on her feet, except for the two hours
when she had worked at her sewing-machine, while Harry
and Jenny were taking their morning nap. She had not had
time to change her dress until after supper, and she had felt
so tired then that it had not seemed worth while to do so.
There was, in fact, nothing to change to, since she had
made over the blue silk, except an old black organdie, cut
square in the neck, which she had worn in the months
before Jenny's birth. As a girl she had loved pretty clothes;
but there were so many other things to think about now,
and from the day that her first child had come to her it had
seemed to matter less and less what she wore or how she
appeared. Nothing had really counted in life except the
supreme privilege of giving herself, body and soul, in the
service of love. All that she was - all that she
had - belonged to Oliver and to his children, so what
difference could it make to them, since she gave herself so
completely, whether she wore new clothes or old?

When he turned to her, she had smothered the yawn,
and was smiling. "Is Aunt Belinda just the same?" she
asked, for he had not answered her question about Susan.

"To tell the truth, I forgot to ask," he replied, with a
laugh." Susan seemed very cheerful, and John

Henry was there, of course. It wouldn't surprise me to hear
any day that they are to be married. By the way, Virginia,
why did you never tell me what a good rider you are?
Abby Goode says you would have been a better
horsewoman than she is if you hadn't given up riding."

"Why, I haven't been in the saddle for years. I stopped
when we had to sell my horse Bess, and that was before
you came back to Dinwiddie. How did Abby happen to
be there?"

"She stopped to see Susan about something, and then
we got to talking - the bunch of us. John Henry asked me
to exercise his horse for him when he doesn't go. I rather
hope I'll get a chance to go foxhunting in the autumn. Abby
was talking about it."

"Has she changed much? I haven't seen her for years.
She is hardly ever in Dinwiddie."

"Well, she's fatter, but it's becoming to her. It makes her
look softer. She's a bit coarse, but she tells a capital story.
I always liked Abby."

"Yes, I always liked Abby, too," answered Virginia, and
it was on the tip of her tongue to add that Abby had
always liked Oliver. "If he hadn't seen me, perhaps he
might have married her," she thought, and the remote
possibility of such bliss for poor defrauded Abby filled her
with an incredible tenderness. She would never have
believed that bouncing, boisterous Abby Goode could
have aroused in her so poignant a sympathy.

He appeared so much more cheerful than she had seen
him since his disastrous trip to New York, that, moved by
an unselfish impulse of gratitude towards the cause of it,
she put out her hand to him, while he raised his arm to
extinguish the light.

"I am so glad about the horse, dear," she said. "It will be
nice for you to go sometimes with Abby."

"Why couldn't you come too, Jinny?"

"Oh, I shouldn't have time - and, besides, I gave it up
long ago. I don't think a mother has any business on
horseback."

"All the same I wish you wouldn't let yourself go to
pieces. What have you done to your hands? They used to
be so pretty."

She drew them hastily away, while the tears rose in a
mist to her eyes. It was like a man - it was especially like
Oliver - to imagine that she could clean up half a house and
take charge of three children, yet keep her hands as white
and soft as they had been when she was a girl and did
nothing except wait for a lover. In a flash of memory, she
saw the reddened and knotted hands of her mother, and
then a procession of hands belonging to all the mothers of
her race that had gone before her. Were her own but a
single pair in that chain of pathetic hands that had worked
in the exacting service of Love?

"It is so hard to keep them nice," she said; but her heart
cried, "What do my hands matter when it is for your sake
that I have spoiled them?" With her natural tendency to
undervalue the physical pleasures of life, she had looked
upon her beauty as a passing bloom which would attract
her lover to the veiled wonders of her spirit. Fleshly beauty
as an end in itself would have appeared to her as immoral a
cult as the wilful pursuit of a wandering desire in the male.

"I never noticed until to-night what pretty hands Abby
has" he said, innocently enough, as he turned off the gas.

A strange sensation - something which was so different
from anything she had ever felt before that she could
not give it a name - pierced her heart like an arrow. Then it
fled as suddenly as it had come, and left her at ease with
the thought: "Abby has had nothing to hurt her hands. Why
shouldn't they be pretty?" But not for Abby's hands would
she have given up a single hour when she had washed
Jenny's little flannels or dug enchanted garden beds with
Harry's miniature trowel.

"She used to have a beautiful figure," she said with
perfect sincerity.

"Well, she's got it still, though she's a trifle too large for
my taste. You can't help liking her - she's such jolly good
company, but, somehow, she doesn't seem womanly.
She's too fond of sport and all that sort of thing."

His ideal woman still corresponded to the type which he
had chosen for his mate; for true womanliness was
inseparably associated in his mind with those qualities
which had awakened for generations the impulse of sexual
selection in the men of his race. Though he enjoyed Abby,
he refused stubbornly to admire her, since evolution, which
moves rapidly in the development of the social activities,
had left his imagination still sacredly cherishing the
convention of the jungle in the matter of sex. He saw
woman as dependent upon man for the very integrity of
her being, and beyond the divine fact of this dependency,
he did not see her at all. But there was nothing sardonic in
his point of view, which had become considerably
strengthened by his marriage to Virginia, who shared it. It
was one of those mental attitudes,

indeed, which, in the days of loose thinking and of hazy
generalizations, might have proved its divine descent by its
universality. Oliver, his Uncle Cyrus, the rector, and honest
John Henry, however they may have differed in their views
of the universe or of each other, were one at least in
accepting the historical dogma of the supplementary being
of woman.

And yet, so strange is life, so inexplicable are its
contradictions, there were times when Oliver's ideal
appeared almost to betray him, and the intellectual limitation
of Virginia bored rather than delighted him. Habit, which is
a sedative to a phlegmatic nature, acts not infrequently as a
positive irritant upon the temperament of the artist; and
since he had turned from his work in a passion of disgust at
the dramatic obtuseness of his generation, he had felt more
than ever the need of some intellectual outlet for the torrent
of his imagination. As a wife, Virginia was perfect; as a
mental companion, she barely existed at all. She was, he
had come to recognize, profoundly indifferent to the actual
world. Her universe was a fiction except the part of it that
concerned him or the children. He had never forgotten that
he had read his play to her one night shortly after Jenny's
birth, and she had leaned forward with her chin on her palm
and a look in her face as if she were listening for a cry
which never came from the nursery. Her praise had had the
sound of being recited by rote, and had aroused in him a
sense of exasperation which returned even now whenever
she mentioned his work. In the days of his courtship the
memory of her simplicities clung like an exquisite bouquet
to the intoxicating image of her; but in eight

years of daily intimacy the flavour and the perfume of mere
innocence had evaporated. The quality which had first
charmed him was, perhaps, the first of which he had grown
weary. He still loved Virginia, but he had ceased to talk to
her. "If you go into the refrigerator, Oliver, don't upset
Jenny's bottle of milk," she said, looking after him as he
turned towards the dining-room.

Her foot was already on the bottom step of the
staircase, for she had heard, or imagined that she had
heard, a sound from the nursery, and she was impatient to
see if one of the children had awakened and got out of
bed. All the evening, while she had changed the skin-tight
sleeves of the eighties to the balloon ones of the nineties in
an old waist which she had had before her marriage and
had never worn because it was unbecoming, her thoughts
had been of Harry, whom she had punished for some act
of flagrant rebellion during the afternoon. Now she was
eager to comfort him if he was awake and unhappy, or
merely to cuddle and kiss him if he was fast asleep in his
bed.

At the top of the staircase she saw the lowered lamp in
the nursery, and beside it stood Harry in his little
nightgown, with a toy ship in his arms.

"Mamma, I'm tired of bed and I want to play."

"S - sush, darling, you will wake Jenny. It isn't day yet.
You must go back to bed."

Her eyes were heavy with sleep, and her limbs trembled
from the exhaustion of the long June day; but she
remembered the punishment of the afternoon, and as she
looked at him her heart seemed melting with tenderness.

"I'll promise, precious. No, you mustn't take your ship
to bed with you. That's a darling."

Then, as Oliver was heard coming softly up the stairs for
fear of arousing the children, she caught Harry's moist hand
in hers and stole with him into the nursery.

To Virginia in the long torrid days of that summer there
seemed time for neither anxiety nor disappointment. Every
minute of her eighteen waking hours was spent in keeping
the children washed, dressed, and good-humoured. She
thought of herself so little that it never occurred to her to
reflect whether she was happy or unhappy - hardly, even,
whether she was awake or asleep. Twice a week John
Henry's horse carried Oliver for a ride with Abby and
Susan, and on these evenings he stayed so late that Virginia
ceased presently even to make a presence of waiting
supper. Several times, on September afternoons, when the
country burned with an illusive radiance as if it were seen
through a mirage, she put on her old riding-habit, which she
had hunted up in the attic at the rectory, and mounting one
of Abby's horses, started to accompany them; but her
conscience reproached her so bitterly at the thought that
she was seeking pleasure away from the children, that she
hurried homeward across the fields before the others were
ready to turn. As with most women who are born

for motherhood, that supreme fact had not only absorbed
the emotional energy of her girlhood, but had consumed in
its ecstatic flame even her ordinary capacities for
enjoyment. While fatherhood left Oliver still a prey to
dreams and disappointments, the more exclusive maternal
passion rendered Virginia profoundly indifferent to every
aspect of life except the intimate personal aspect of her
marriage. She couldn't be happy - she couldn't even be at
ease - while she remembered that the children were left to
the honest, yet hardly tender, mercies of Marthy.

"I shall never go again," she thought, as she slipped from
her saddle at the gate, and, catching up her long riding-skirt,
ran up the short walk to the steps. "I must be getting
old. Something has gone out of me."

And there was no regret in her heart for this something
which had fled out of her life, for the flashing desires and
the old breathless pleasures of youth which she had lost.
For a month this passive joy lasted - the joy of one whose
days are full and whose every activity is in useful service.
Then there came an October afternoon which she never
forgot because it burned across her life like a prairie fire
and left a scarred track of memory behind it. It had been a
windless day, filled with glittering blue lights that darted like
birds down the long ash-coloured roads, and spun with a
golden web of air which made the fields and trees appear
as thin and as unsubstantial as dreams. The children were
with Marthy in the park, and Virginia, attired in the old
waist with the new sleeves, was leaning on the front gate
watching the slow fall of the leaves from the gnarled
mulberry tree at the corner, when Mrs. Pendleton
appeared on the opposite

side of the street and crossed the cobblestones of the road
with her black alpaca skirt trailing behind her.

"I wonder why in the world mother doesn't hold up her
skirt?" thought Virginia, swinging back the little wooden
gate while she waited. "Mother, you are letting your train
get all covered with dust!" she called, as soon as Mrs.
Pendleton came near enough to catch her half-whispered
warning.

Reaching down indifferently, the older woman caught up
a handful of her skirt and left the rest to follow
ignominiously in the dust. From the carelessness of the
gesture, Virginia saw at once that her mother's mind was
occupied by one of those rare states of excitement or of
distress when even the preservation of her clothes had sunk
to a matter of secondary importance. When the small
economies were banished from Mrs. Pendleton's
consciousness, matters had assumed indeed a serious
aspect.

"Let me come in and speak to you, Jinny. I mean inside
the house. One can never be sure that some of the
neighbours aren't listening," she said in a whisper.

Hurrying past her daughter, she went into the hall, and,
then turning, faced her with her hand on the doorknob. In
the dim light of the hall her face showed white and drawn,
like the face of a person who has been suddenly stricken
with illness. "Jinny, I've just had a visit from Mrs.
Carrington - you know what a gossip she is - but I think I
ought to tell you that she says people are talking about
Oliver's riding so much with Abby."

in her heart, pierced Virginia while she stood there, barring
the door with her hands. Her peace, which had seemed
indestructible a moment ago, was shattered by a sensation
of violent anger - not against Abby, not against Oliver, not
even against the gossiping old women of Dinwiddie - but
against her own blindness, her own inconceivable folly! At
the moment the civilization of centuries was stripped from
her, and she was as simple and as primitive as a female of
the jungle. On the surface she was still calm, but to her own
soul she felt that she presented the appalling spectacle of a
normal woman turned fury. It was one of those instants that
are so unexpected, so entirely unnatural and out of harmony
with the rest of life, that they obliterate the boundaries of
character which separate the life of the individual from the
ancient root of the race. Not Virginia, but the primeval
woman in her blood, shrieked out in protest as she saw her
hold on her mate threatened. The destruction of the
universe, as long as it left her house standing in its bit of
ground, would have overwhelmed her less utterly.

"But what on earth can they say, mother? It was all my
fault. I made him go. He never lifted his finger for Abby."

"I know, darling, I know. Of course, Oliver is not to
blame, but people will talk, and I think Abby ought to
have known better."

For an instant only Virginia hesitated. Then something
stronger than the primitive female in her blood - the spirit
of a lady - spoke through her lips.

"She always wanted me to go, mother. I don't believe
she thought for a minute that she was doing
anything wrong. Abby is a little coarse, but she's perfectly
good. Nobody will make me think otherwise."

"Well, it can't go on, dear. You must stop Oliver's
riding with her. And Mrs. Carrington says she hears that he
is going to Atlantic City with them in General Goode's
private car on Thursday."

"Abby asked me, too, but of course I couldn't leave the
children."

"Of course not. Oliver must give it up, too. Oh, Jinny, a
scandal, even where one is innocent, is so terrible. A
woman - a true woman - would endure death rather than
be talked about. I remember your cousin Jane Pendleton
made an unhappy marriage, and her husband used to get
drunk and beat her and even carry on dreadfully with the
coloured servants - but she said that was better than the
disgrace of a separation."

"But all that has nothing to do with me, mother. Oliver is
an angel, and this is every bit my fault, not Abby's." The
violence in her soul had passed, and she felt suddenly
calm.

"Of course, darling, of course. Now that you see what
it has led to, you can stop it immediately."

They were so alike as they stood there facing each other,
mother and daughter, that they might have represented
different periods of the same life - youth and
age meeting together. Both were perfect products of that
social order whose crowning grace and glory they were.
Both were creatures trained to feel rather than think, whose
very goodness was the result not

of reason, but of emotion. And, above all, both were
gentlewomen to the innermost cores of their natures.
Passion could not banish for long that exquisite
forbearance which generations had developed from a
necessity into an art.

"I can't stop his going with her, because that would
make people think I believed the things they say - but I
can go, too, mother, and I will. I'll borrow Susan's horse
and go fox-hunting with them to-morrow."

Once again, as on the afternoon when she had heard of
Oliver's illness in New York, Mrs. Pendleton realized that
her daughter's strength was more than a match for hers
when the question related to Oliver.

"But the children, dear - and then, oh, Jinny, you might
get hurt."

To her surprise Jinny laughed.

"I shan't get hurt, mother - and if I did - "

She left her sentence unfinished, but in the break there
was the first note of bitterness that her mother had ever
heard from her lips. Was it possible, after all, that there
was "more in it" than she had let appear in her words?
Was it possible that her passionate defence of Abby had
been but a beautiful presence?

"I'll go straight down to the Treadwells' to ask Susan
for her horse," she added cheerfully, "and you'll come
over very early, won't you, to stay with the children?
Oliver always starts before daybreak."

"Yes, darling, I'll get up at dawn and come over - but,
Jinny, promise me to be careful."

"Oh, I'll be careful," responded Virginia lightly, as she
went out on the porch.

CHAPTER VII
THE WILL TO LIVE
"IT'S all horrid
talk. There's not a word of truth in it," she
thought, true to the Pendleton point of view, as she turned
into Old Street on her way to the Treadwells'. Then the
sound of horses' hoofs rang on the cobblestones, and,
looking past the corner, she saw Oliver and Abby
galloping under the wine-coloured leaves of the oak tree at
the crossing. His face was turned back, as if he were
looking over his shoulder at the red sunset, and he was
laughing as she had not heard him laugh since that dreadful
morning in the bedroom of the New York hotel. What a
boy he was still! As she watched him, it seemed to her that
she was old enough to be his mother, and the soreness in
her heart changed into an exquisite impulse of tenderness.
Then he looked from the sunset to Abby, and at the glance
of innocent pleasure that passed between them a stab of
jealousy entered her heart like a blade. Before it faded,
they had passed the corner, and were cantering wildly up
Old Street in the direction of Abby's home.

"It is my fault. I am too settled. I am letting my youth go,"
she said, with a passionate determination to catch her
girlhood and hold it fast before it eluded her forever. "I am
only twenty-eight and I dress like a woman of forty." And
it seemed to her

that the one desirable thing in life was this fleet-winged
spirit of youth, which passed like a breath, leaving
existence robbed of all romance and beauty. An hour
before she had not cared, and she would not care now if
only Oliver could grow middle-aged and old at the
moment when she did. Ah, there was the tragedy! All life
was for men, and only a few radiant years of it were given
to women. Men were never too old to love, to pursue and
capture whatever joy the fugitive instant might hold for
them. But women, though they were allowed only one
experience out of the whole of life, were asked to resign
even that one at the very minute when they needed it most.
"I wonder what will become of me when the children grow
big enough to be away all the time as Oliver is," she
thought wistfully. "I wish one never grew too old to have
babies."

The front door of the Treadwell house stood open, and
in the hall Susan was arranging golden-rod and life-ever-lasting
in a blue china bowl.

"Of course, you may have Belle to-morrow," she said in
answer to Virginia's faltering request. "Even if I intended
going, I'd be only too glad to lend her to you - but I can't
leave mother anyway. She always gets restless if I stay out
over an hour."

Mrs. Treadwell's illness had become one of those
painful facts which people accept as naturally as they
accept the theological dogma of damnation. It was terrible,
when they thought of it, but they seldom thought of it,
thereby securing tranquility of mind in the face of both facts
and dogmas. Even Virginia had ceased to make her first
question when she met Susan, "How is your mother?"

"But, Susan, you need the exercise. I thought that was
why the doctor made Uncle Cyrus get you a horse."

"It was, but I only go for an hour in the afternoon. I
begrudge every minute I spend away from mother. Oh,
Jinny, she is so pathetic! It almost breaks my heart to
watch her."

"I know, dearest," said Virginia; but at the back of her
brain she was thinking, "They looked so happy together,
yet he could never really admire Abby. She isn't at all the
kind of woman he likes."

So preoccupied was she by this problem of her own
creation, that her voice had a strangely far off sound, as
though it came from a distance. "I wish I could help you,
dear Susan. If you ever want me, day or night, you know
you have only to send for me. I'd let nothing except
desperate illness stand in the way of my coming."

It was true, and because she knew that it was true,
Susan stooped suddenly and kissed her.

"You are looking tired, Jinny. What is the matter?"

"Nothing except that I'm a sight in this old waist. I made
it over to save buying one, but I wish now I hadn't. It
makes me look so settled."

"You need some clothes, and you used to be so fond of
them."

"That was before the children came. I've never cared
much since. It's just as if life were a completed circle,
somehow. There's nothing more to expect or to wait
for - you'll understand what I mean some day, Susan."

"I think I do now. But only women are like that? Men
are different - "

There was a wistful note in the question, and around her
gentle blue eyes appeared a group of little lines, brought
out by the nervous contraction of her forehead. Was it the
wan, smoky light of the dusk? - Susan wondered, or was
Virginia really beginning to break so soon?

"Why, I like Abby. I always did," she answered, trying
to look as if she did not understand what Virginia had
meant. "She's a little bit what John Henry calls 'loud,' but
she has a good heart and would do anybody a kindness."

She had evaded answering, just as Virginia had evaded
asking, the question which both knew had passed
unuttered between them - was Abby to be trusted to keep
inviolate the ancient unwritten pledge of honourable
womanhood? Her character was being tested by the single
decisive virtue exacted of her sex.

"I am glad you feel that way," said Virginia in a relieved
manner after a minute, "because I should hate not to
believe in Abby, and some people don't understand her
manner - mother among them."

The wistful sound had passed out of Virginia's voice,
while the little lines faded as suddenly from the corners of
her eyes. She looked better already - only she really ought
not to wear such dowdy clothes, even though she was happily
married, reflected Susan, as

she watched her, a few minutes later, pass over the
mulberry leaves, which lay, thick and still, on the sidewalk.

At the corner of Sycamore Street a shopkeeper was
putting away his goods for the night, and in the window
Virginia saw a length of hyacinth-blue silk, matching her
eyes, which she had remotely coveted for weeks - never
expecting to possess it, yet never quite reconciling herself
to the thought that it might be worn by some other woman.
That length of silk had grown gradually to symbolize the
last glimmer of girlish vanity which motherhood had not
extinguished in her heart; and while she looked at it now, in
her new recklessness of mood, a temptation, born of the
perversity which rules human fate, came to her to go in and
buy it while she was still desperate enough to act foolishly
and not be afraid. For the first time in her life that
immemorial spirit of adventure which lies buried under the
dead leaves of civilization at the bottom of every human
heart - with whose rearisen ghost men have moved
mountains and ploughed jungles and charted illimitable
seas - this imperishable spirit stirred restlessly in its grave
and prompted her for once to be uncalculating and to risk
the future. In the flickering motive winch guided her as she
entered the shop, one would hardly have recognized the lusty
impulse which had sent her ancestors on splendid rambles of
knight-errantry, yet its hidden source was the same. The simple
purchase of twelve yards of blue silk which she had
wanted for weeks! To an outsider it would have appeared
a small matter, yet in the act there was the intrepid struggle
of a personal will to enforce its desire upon destiny. She would win

back the romance and the beauty of living at the cost of
prudence, at the cost of practical comforts, at the cost, if
need be, of those ideals of womanly duty to which the
centuries had trained her! For eight years she had hardly
thought of herself, for eight years she had worked and
saved and planned and worried, for eight years she had
given her life utterly and entirely to Oliver and the
children - and the result was that he was happier with
Abby - with Abby whom he didn't even admire - than he
was with the wife whom he both respected and loved! The
riddle not only puzzled, it enraged her. Though she was too
simple to seek a psychological answer, the very fact that it
existed became an immediate power in her life. She forgot
the lateness of the evening, she forgot the children who
were anxiously watching for her return. The forces of
character, which she had always regarded as divinely fixed
and established, melted and became suddenly fluid. She
wasn't what she had been the minute before - she wasn't
even, she began dimly to realize, what she would probably
be the minute afterwards. Yet the impulse which governed
her now was as despotic as if it had reigned in undisputed
authority since the day of her birth. She knew that it was a
rebel against the disciplined and moderate rule of her
conscience, but this knowledge, which would have horrified
her had she been in a normal mood, aroused in her now
merely a breathless satisfaction at the spectacle of her own
audacity. The natural Virginia had triumphed for an instant
over the Virginia whom the ages had bred.

the three children in tears for fear she should decide to
stay out forever.

"Oh, mother, we thought you'd gone away never to
come back," sobbed Lucy, throwing herself into her arms,
"and what would little Jenny have done?"

"Where in the world have you been, Virginia?" asked
Oliver, a trifle impatiently, for he was not used to having
her absent from the house at meal hours. "I was afraid
somebody had been taken ill at the rectory, so I went
around to inquire."

"No, nobody was ill," answered Virginia quietly. Though
her resolution made her tremble all over, it did not occur to
her for an instant that even now she might recede from it.
As the rector had gone to the war, so she was going now
to battle with Abby. She was afraid, but that quality which
had made the Pendletons despise fear since the beginning
of Dinwiddie's history, which they had helped to make,
enabled her to control her quivering muscles and to laugh
at the reproachful protests with which the children
surrounded her. Through her mind there shot the thought:
"I have a secret from Oliver," and she felt suddenly guilty
because for the first time since her marriage she was
keeping something back from him. Then, following this,
there came the knowledge, piercing her heart, that she
must keep her secret because even if she told him, he
would not understand. With the casualness of a man's
point of view towards an emotion, he would judge its
importance, she felt, chiefly by the power it possessed of
disturbing the course of his life. Unobservant, and

ever ready to twist and decorate facts as she was, it
had still been impossible for her to escape the truth that
men are by nature incapable of a woman's characteristic
passion for nursing sentiment. To struggle to keep a feeling
alive for no better reason than that it was a feeling, would
appear as wastefully extravagant to Oliver as to the
unimaginative majority of his sex. Such pure, sublime,
uncalculating folly belonged to woman alone!

When, at last, supper was over and the children were
safely in bed, she came downstairs to Oliver, who was
smoking a cigar over a newspaper, and asked carelessly:

"At what time do you start in the morning?"

"I'd like to be up by five," he replied, without lowering
his paper. "We're to meet the hounds at Croswell's store at
a quarter of six, so I'll have to get off by five at the latest. I
wanted my horse fresh for to-morrow, that's why I only
went a mile or two this afternoon," he added.

"Susan's to lend me Belle. I'm going with you," she said,
after a pause in which he had begun to read his paper
again. This habit of treating her as if she were not present
when he wanted to read or to work, was, she
remembered, one of the things she had insisted upon in the
beginning of her marriage.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, and the paper dropped from
his hands. "I'm jolly glad, but what will you do about the
children?"

"Mother is coming to look after them. I'll be back in
time to hear Harry's lessons, I suppose."

sore. You haven't ridden after the hounds since I knew
you. You might even get a fall."

"I used to go, though, a great deal - and it won't hurt
me to be stiff for a few days. Besides, I want to take up
hunting again."

Her motive was beyond him - perhaps because of her
nearness, which prevented his getting the proper
perspective of vision. For all his keenness of insight, he
failed utterly to see into the mysterious mind of his wife. He
could not penetrate that subtle interplay of traditional
virtues and discover that she was in the clutch of one of the
oldest and most savage of the passions.

"Then you'd better go to bed early and get some sleep,"
he said. "I suppose we'll have a cup of coffee before
starting."

"I'll make it on the oil stove while I am dressing. Marthy
won't be up then."

"Well, I'll come upstairs in ten mintues," he replied,
taking up his paper again. "I only want to finish this article."

In the morning when she opened the old green shutters
and looked out of the window, the horses, having been
saddled by candlelight, were standing under the mulberry
tree at the gate. Eight years ago, in her girlhood, she would
have awakened in a delicious excitement on the morning of
a fox-hunt, and have dressed as eagerly as if she were
going to a ball; but to-day, while she lit the oil-stove in the
hall room and put on the kettle of water, she was
supported not by the hope of pleasure, but by a dull, an
almost indefinable sensation of dread. The instinct of
woman to adjust her personality to the changing ideals of the

man she loves - this instinct older than civilization, rooted
in tragedy, and existing by right of an unconquerable
necessity - rose superior at the moment to that more stable
maternal passion with which it has conflicted since the
beginning of motherhood. While she put on her riding-habit
and tied up the plait of her hair, the one thought in
Virginia's mind was that she must be, at all costs, the kind
of woman that Oliver wanted.

A little later, when they set out under the mulberry trees,
she glanced at him wistfully, as though she wanted him to
praise the way she looked in the saddle. But his eyes were
on the end of the street, where a little company of riders
awaited them, and before she could ask a question, Abby's
high voice was heard exclaiming pleasantly upon her
presence. Not a particularly imposing figure, because of her
rather short legs, when she was on the ground, it was
impossible for Virginia to deny that Abby was amazingly
handsome on horseback. Plump, dark, with a superb
bosom, and a colour in her cheeks like autumnal berries,
she had never appeared to better advantage than she did,
sitting on her spirited bay mare under an arch of scarlet
leaves which curved over her head. Turning at their
approach, she started at a brisk canter up the road, and as
Virginia followed her, the sound of the horn floated, now
loud, now faint, out of the pale mist that spun fanciful silken
webs over the trees and bushes.

"Remember to look out for the creeks. That's where the
danger comes," said Oliver, riding close to her, and he
added nervously, "Don't try to keep up with Abby."

Ahead of them stretched a deserted Virginia road, with
its look of brooding loneliness, as if it had waited patiently
through the centuries for a civilization which had never
come; and on the right of it, beyond a waste of scarlet
sumach and sassafras and a winding creek screened in
elder bushes, the dawn was breaking slowly under a single
golden-edged cloud. Somebody on Virginia's left - a large,
raw-boned, passionate huntsman, in an old plum-coloured
overcoat with a velvet collar - was complaining loudly that
they had started too late and the fox would have gone to
his lair before they reached the main party. Except for an
oath, which he rapped out by way of an emphasis not
intended for the ladies, he might have been conducting a
religious revival, so solemnly energetic, so deeply moved,
was his manner. The hunt, which observed naturally the
characteristics of a society that was ardently individualistic
even in its sports, was one of those informal, "go-as-you-please"
affairs in which the supreme joy of killing is not
hampered by tedious regulations or unnecessary
restrictions. The chief thing was to get a run - to start a rare
red fox, if luck was good, because he was supposed to run
straight by nature and not to move in circles after the
inconsiderate manner of the commoner grey sort. But
Providence, being inattentive to the needs of hunters in the
neighbourhood of Dinwiddie, had decreed that the red fox
should live there mainly in the vivid annals of old sportsmen.

"A grey fox with red ears. The best run I ever had. Tried
to get in the crotch of a hickory tree at the end. Was so
exhausted he couldn't stir a foot when the hounds got
him." While they waited at the

crossroads before a little country store, where the
pack of hounds, lean, cringing, habitually hungry creatures,
started from beneath an old field pine on the right, Virginia
heard the broken phrases blown on the wind, which
carried the joyous notes of the horn over the meadows.
The casual cruelty of the words awoke no protest in her
mind, because it was a cruelty to which she was
accustomed. If the sport had been unknown in Dinwiddie,
and she had read of it as the peculiar activity of the
inhabitants of the British Islands, she would probably have
condemned it as needlessly brutal and degrading. But with
that universal faculty of the human mind to adjust its
morality to fit its inherited physical habits, she regarded "the
rights of the fox" to-day with something of the humorous
scorn of sentimental rubbish with which her gentler
grandmother had once regarded "the rights of the slave."
For centuries the hunt had been one of the cherished
customs of Dinwiddians; and though she could not bear to
see a fly caught in a web it would never have occurred to
her to question the humanity of any sport in which her
ancestors had delighted. In her girlhood the sound of the
horn had called to her blood with all the intoxicating
associations it awoke in the raw-boned, energetic ride; in the
plum-coloured coat - but to-day both the horn and the
familiar landscape around her had grown strange and
unhomelike. For the first time since her birth she and the
country were out of harmony.

In the midst of the hounds, in the centre of the old field
on the right, the huntsman, who was at the same time
master and owner of the dogs, brandished a long

raw-hide whip, flexible from the handle, which was
pleasantly known in Dinwiddie as a "mule-skinner." His
face, burned to the colour of ripe wheat, wore a rapt and
exalted look, as though the chasing of a small animal to its
death had called forth his latent spiritual ardours. Beyond
him, like a low, smouldering fire, ran the red and gold of
the abandoned field.

"Please be careful, Virginia," said Oliver again, as they
left the road and cantered in the direction of a clump of
pine woods in a hollow beyond a rotting "snake" fence.

But she had seen his eyes on Abby a minute before, and
had heard his laugh as he answered her. A wave of
recklessness broke over her, and she felt that she despised
fear with all her Pendleton blood, which loved a fight only
less passionately than it loved a sermon. Whatever
happened - if she broke her neck - she resolved that she
would keep up with Abby! With the drumming of the
blood in her ears, an almost savage joy awoke in her.
Deep down in her, so deep that it was buried beneath the
Virginia Pendleton whom she and her world knew, there
stirred faintly the seeds of that ancient lust of cruelty from
which have sprung the brutal pleasures of men. The part of
her - that small secret part - which was primitive answered
to the impulse of jealousy as it did to the rapturous baying
of the hounds out of the red and gold distance. A branch
grazed her cheek; her hat went as she raced down the high
banks of a stream; the thicket of elder tore the ribbon from
her head, and loosened her dark flying hair from its braid.
In that desolate country, in the midst of the October
meadows, with the cries of the hounds rising, like the

voice of mortal tragedy, out of the tinted mist on the
marshes, the drama of human passions - which is the only
drama for the world's stage - was played out to an ending:
love, jealousy, envy, desire, regret - * * *

But when the hunt was over, and she rode home, with a
bedraggled brush, which had once been grey, tied to her
bridle, all the gorgeous pageantry of the autumnal
landscape seemed suddenly asking her: "What is the use?"
Her mood had altered, and she felt that her victory was as
worthless as the mud-stained fox's brush that swung
mockingly back and forth from her bridle. The excitement
of the chase had ebbed away, leaving only the lifeless
satisfaction of the reward. She had neglected her children,
she had risked her life - and all for the sake of wresting a
bit of dead fur out of Abby's grasp. A spirit which was not
her spirit, which was so old that she no longer recognized
that it had any part in her, which was yet so young that it
burned in her heart with the unquenchable flame of
youth - this spirit, which was at the same time herself and
not herself, had driven her, as helpless as a fallen leaf, in a
chase that she despised, towards a triumph that was worthless.

"By Jove, you rode superbly, Virginia! I had no idea
you could do it," said Oliver, as they trotted into
Dinwiddie.

She smiled back at him, and her smile was tired, dust-stained,
enigmatical.

For an instant, looking away from him over the radiant
fields, she pondered the question. The silence which had
settled around her was unbroken by the sound of the
horses' hoofs, by the laughter of the hunters, by the far-off
soughing of the pine trees in the forest; and into this silence,
which seemed to cover an eternity, the two Virginias - the
Virginia who desired and the Virginia who had learned
from the ages to stifle her desire - wrestled for the first
time together.

"Virginia!" floated Abby's breezy tones from the street
behind her, and turning, she rode back to the Goodes'
gate, where the others were dismounting. "Virginia, aren't
you going to Atlantic City with us to-morrow?"

Again she hesitated. Almost unconsciously her gaze
passed from Abby to Oliver, and she saw his pride in her
in the smile with which he watched her.

"Yes, I'll go with you," she replied after a minute.

She had, for once in her life, done the thing she wanted
to do simply because she wanted to do it. She had won
back what she was losing; she had fought a fair fight and
she had triumphed; yet as she rode down the street to her
gate, there was none of the exultation of victory, none of
the fugitive excitement of pleasure even in her heart. Like
other mortals in other triumphant instants, she was learning
that the fruit of desire may be sweet to the eyes and bitter
on the lips. She had sacrificed duty to pleasure, and
suddenly she had discovered that to one with her heritage
of good and evil the two are inseparable.

CHAPTER VIII
THE PANG OF MOTHERHOOD
IN THE night Harry awoke
crying. He had dreamed, he
said between his sobs, when Virginia, slipperless and in
her nightdress, bent over him, that his mother was going
away from him forever.

"Only for two nights, darling. Here, lean close against
mother. Don't you know that she wouldn't stay away from
her precious boy?"

"But two nights are so long. Aren't two nights almost
forever?"

"Why, my lamb, it was just two nights ago that grandma
came over and told you the Bible story about Joseph and
his brothers. That was only a teeny-weeny time ago,
wasn't it?"

"But you were here, then mamma. And this morning was
almost forever. You stayed out so long that Lucy said you
weren't coming back any more."

"That was naughty of Lucy because she is old enough
to know better. Why do you choke that way? Does your
throat hurt you?"

"It hurts because you are going away, mamma."

"But I'm going only to be with papa, precious.
Don't you want poor papa to have somebody with him?"

"He's so big he can go by himself. But suppose the
black man should come in the night while you are

"Grandma would hear you, Harry, and there isn't any
black man that comes in the night. You must put that idea
out of your head, dear. You're getting too big a boy to be
afraid of the dark."

"Four isn't big, is it?"

"You're nearer five than four now, honey. Let me
button your nightgown, and lie down and try to go to sleep
while mamma sings to you. Does your throat really hurt
you?"

"It feels as if it had teensy-weensy marbles in it. They
came there when I woke up in the dark and thought that
you were going away tomorrow."

"Well, if your throat hurts you, of course mamma won't
leave you. Open your mouth wide now so I can look at it."

She lighted a candle while Harry, kneeling in the middle
of his little bed, followed her with his blue eyes, which
looked three times their usual size because of his flushed
cheeks and his mounting excitement. His throat appeared
slightly inflamed when she held the candle close to it, and
after tucking him beneath the bedclothes, she poured a little
camphorated oil into a cup and heated it on the small
alcohol lamp she kept in the nursery.

"Mamma is going to put a nice bandage on your throat,
and then she is going to lie down beside you and sing you
to sleep," she said cheerfully, as she cut off a strip of
flannel from an old petticoat and prepared to saturate it
with the heated oil.

"All night, precious, if you'll be good and go fast asleep
while I am singing."

Holding tightly to her nightdress, Harry cuddled down
between the pillows with a contented sigh. "Then I don't
mind about the marbles in my throat," he said.

"But mamma minds, and she wants to cure them before
morning. Now lie very still while she wraps this good
flannel bandage over the sore places."

"I'll lie very still if you'll hold me, mamma."

Blowing out the candle, she crept into the little bed
beside him, and lay singing softly until his hands released
their desperate grasp of her nightdress, and he slipped
quietly off to sleep. Even then, remembering her promise,
she did not go back to her bedroom until daylight.

"I wonder what makes Harry so afraid of the dark?" she
asked, when Oliver awoke and turned questioningly
towards her. "He worked himself really sick last night just
from pure nervousness. I had to put camphorated oil on his
throat and chest, and lie beside him until morning. He is
sleeping quietly now, but it simply frightens me to death
when one of them complains of sore throat."

"But how can you tell whether the fright makes him sick
or sickness brings on the fright? His throat was really red,
there's no doubt about that, but I couldn't see last night that
it was at all ulcerated."

"He gives you more trouble than both the other children
put together."

"Well, he's a boy, and boys do give one more trouble.
But, then, you have less patience with him, Oliver."

"That's because he's a boy, and I like boys to show
some pluck even when they are babies. Lucy and Jenny
never raise these midnight rows whenever they awake in
the dark."

"They are not nearly so sensitive. You don't understand
Harry."

"Perhaps I don't, but I can see that you are ruining him."

"Oh, Oliver! How can you say such a cruel thing to
me?"

"I didn't mean to be cruel, Jinny, and you know it, but all
the same it makes me positively sick to see you make a
slave of yourself over the children. Why, you look as if you
hadn't slept for a week. You are positively haggard."

"But I have to be up with Harry when he is ill. How in
the world could I help it?"

"You know he kicks up these rows almost every night,
and you humour every one of his whims as if it were the
first one. Don't you ever get tired?"

"Of course I do, but I can't let my child suffer even if it
is only from fear. You haven't any patience, Oliver. Don't
you remember the time when you used to be afraid of
things?"

"I was never afraid of the dark in my life. No sensible
child is, if he is brought up properly."

"Do you mean I am not bringing up my children - " Her
tears choked her and she could not finish the sentence.

an old woman of yourself before your time. You've let
yourself go until you look ten years older than - "

He checked himself in time, but she understood without
his words that he had started to say, "ten years older than
Abby." Yes, Abby did look young - amazingly
young - but, then, what else had she to think of?

She lay down, but she was trembling so violently that
she sat up quickly again in order to recover her
self-possession more easily. It seemed to her that the furious
beating of her heart must make him understand how he had
wounded her. It was the first discussion approaching a
quarrel they had had since their marriage, for she, who was
so pliable in all other matters, had discovered that she
could become as hard as iron where the difference related
to Harry.

"You are unjust, Oliver. I think you ought to see it," she
said in a voice which she kept by an effort from breaking.

"I'll never see it, Jinny," and some dogged impulse to hurt
her more made him add, "It's for Harry's sake as well as
yours that I'm speaking."

"For Harry's sake? Oh, you don't mean - you can't
really mean that you think I'm not doing the best for my
child, Oliver?"

A year ago Oliver would have surrendered at once
before the terror in her eyes; but in those twelve long
months of effort, of hope, of balked ambition, of bitter
questioning, and of tragic disillusionment, a new quality had
developed in his character, and the generous sympathy of
youth had hardened at thirty-four to the cautious
cynicism of middle-age. It is

doubtful if even he himself realized how transient such a
state must be to a nature whose hidden springs were
moved so easily by the mere action of change - by the
effect of any alteration in the objects that surrounded him.
Because the enthusiasm of youth was exhausted at the
minute, it seemed to him that he had lost it forever. And to
Virginia, who saw but one thing at a time and to whom that
one thing was always the present instant, it seemed that the
firm ground upon which she trod had crumbled beneath
her.

"Well, if you want the truth," he said quietly (as if any
mother ever wanted the truth about such a matter), "I think
you make a mistake to spoil Harry as you do."

"But," she brought out the words with a pathetic quiver,
"I treat him just as I do the others, and you never say
anything about my spoiling them."

"Oh, the others are girls. Girls aren't so easily ruined
somehow. They don't get such hard knocks later on, so it
makes less difference about them."

As she sat there in bed, propped up on her elbow,
which trembled violently against the pillows, with her
cambric nightdress, trimmed only with a narrow band of
crocheted lace, opened at her slender throat, and her hair,
which was getting thin at the temples, drawn unbecomingly
back from her forehead, she looked, indeed, as Oliver had
thought, "at least ten years older than Abby." Though she
was not yet thirty, the delicate, flower-like bloom of her
beauty was already beginning to fade. The spirit which had
animated her yesterday appeared to have gone out of her
now. He thought how lovely she had been at

twenty when he saw her for the first time after his return to
Dinwiddie; and a sudden anger seized him because she
was letting herself break, because she was so needlessly
sacrificing her youth and her beauty.

An hour later she got up and dressed herself, with the
feeling that she had not rested a minute during the night.
Harry was listless and fretful when he awoke, and while
she put on his clothes, she debated with herself whether or
not she should summon old Doctor Fraser from around the
corner. When his lesson hour came, he climbed into her lap
and went to sleep with his hot little head on her shoulder,
and though he seemed better by evening, she was still so
anxious about him that she forgot that she had promised
Abby to go with them to Atlantic City until Oliver came in
at dusk and reminded her.

"Aren't you going, Virginia?" he inquired, as he hunted in
the closet for his bag which she had not had time to pack.

"I can't, Oliver. Harry isn't well. He has been unlike
himself all day, and I am afraid to leave him."

"He doesn't seem to know exactly what it is," answered
Virginia, "but if he isn't well by morning, I'll send for
Doctor Fraser."

"He's got a good colour, and I believe he's as well as he
ever was," replied Oliver, while a curious note of hostility
sounded in his voice. "There's nothing the matter with the
boy," he added more positively after a minute. "Aren't you
coming, Virginia?"

which she sat with Harry in her arms, and as she did so,
both became conscious that the issue had broadened from
a question of her going to Atlantic City into a direct conflict
of wills. The only thing that could make her oppose him
had happened for the first time since her marriage. The
feminine impulse to yield was overmatched by the maternal
impulse to protect. She would have surrendered her soul
to him for the asking; but she could not surrender, even
had she desired to do so, the mother love which had
passed into her from out the ages before she had been,
and which would pass through her into the ages to come
after her.

"Of course, if the little chap were really suffering, I'd be
as anxious about staying as you are," said Oliver
impatiently; "but there's nothing the matter. You're all right,
aren't you, Harry?"

"He isn't all right," insisted Virginia obstinately. "There's
something wrong with him. I don't know what it is, but he
isn't in the least like himself."

"It's just your imagination. You've got the children on the
brain, Virginia. Don't you remember the time you woke me
in the night and sent me after Doctor Fraser because Jenny
had a bad attack of the hiccoughs?"

"I know," acknowledged Virginia humbly. She could be
humble enough, but what good did that do when she was,
as he told himself irritably, "as stubborn as a mule"? Her
softness - she had seemed as soft as flowers when he
married her - had been her greatest charm for him after
her beauty; and now,

at the end of eight years in which she had appeared as
delightfully invertebrate as he could have desired, she
revealed to his astonished eyes a backbone that was
evidently made of iron. She was immovable, he admitted,
and because she was immovable he was conscious of a
sharp unreasonable impulse to reduce her to the pliant
curves of her girlhood. After eight years of an absolute
supremacy, which had been far from good for him, his will
had been tripped up at last by so small a thing as a mere
whim of Virginia's.

"You told Abby you would go," he urged, exasperated
rather than soothed by her humility. "And it's too late now
for her to ask any one else."

"I'm so sorry, dear, but I never once thought about it.
I've been so worried all day."

He looked at the child, lying flushed and drowsy in
Virginia's arms, and his face hardened until a latent brutality
crept out around his handsome, but loosely moulded, lips.
The truth was that Harry had never looked healthier than
he did at that instant in the firelight, and the whole affair
appeared to Oliver only another instance of what he called
Virginia's "sensational motherhood."

"Can't you see for yourself that he's perfectly well?" he
asked.

"I know he looks so, dear, but he isn't."

"Well, here's your mother. Leave it to her. She will
agree with me."

"Why, what is it, Jinny?" asked Mrs. Pendleton, laying
her bundle on the couch (for she had come prepared to
spend the night), and regarding Oliver with the indulgent
eyes of an older generation.

with us," said Oliver, angry, yet caressing as he always was
in his manner to his mother-in-law, to whom he was
sincerely devoted. "She's got into her head that there's
something wrong with Harry, but you can tell by looking at
the child that he is perfectly well."

"But I was up with him last night, mother. His throat
hurts him," broke in Virginia in a voice that was full of
emotion.

"He certainly looks all right," remarked Mrs. Pendleton,
"and I can take care of him if anything should be wrong."
Then she added very gravely, "If you can't go, of course
Oliver must stay at home, too, Virginia."

"I can't," said Oliver; "not just for a whim, anyway. It
would break up the party. Besides, I didn't get a holiday all
summer, and I'll blow up that confounded bank unless I
take a change."

In the last quarter of an hour the trip had become of
tremendous importance to him. From a trivial incident
which he might have relinquished a week ago without
regret, the excursion with Abby had attained suddenly the
dignity and the power of an event in his life. Opposition
had magnified inclination into desire.

"I don't think it will do for Oliver to go without you,
Jinny," said Mrs. Pendleton, and the gravity of her face
showed how carefully she was weighing her words.

"But I can't go, mother. You don't understand," replied
Virginia, while her lips worked convulsively. No one could
understand - not even her mother. Of the three of them, it
is probable that she alone realized the complete significance
of her decision.

"Well, it's too late now, anyway," remarked Oliver
shortly. "You wouldn't have time to dress and catch the
train even if you wanted to."

Taking up his bag, he kissed her carelessly, shook
hands with Mrs. Pendleton, and throwing a "Goodbye,
General!" to Harry, went out of the door.

As he vanished, Virginia started up quickly, called
"Oliver!" under her breath, and then sat down again,
drawing her child closer in her arms. Her face had grown
grey and stricken like the face of an old woman. Every
atom of her quivered with the longing to run after him, to
yield to his wish, to promise anything he asked of her. Yet
she knew that if he came back, they would only pass again
through the old wearing struggle of wills. She had chosen
not as she desired to, but as she must, and already she was
learning that life forces one in the end to abide by one's
choices.

"Oh, Virginia, I am afraid it was a mistake," said Mrs.
Pendleton in an agonized tone. The horror of a scandal,
which was stronger in the women of her generation than
even the horror of illness, still darkened her mind.

A shiver passed through Virginia and left her stiller and
graver than before.

"No, it was not a mistake, mother," she answered
quietly. "I did what I was obliged to do. Oliver could not
understand."

As she uttered the words, she saw Oliver's face turned
to Abby with the gay and laughing expression she had seen
on it when the two rode down Old Street together, and a
wave of passionate jealousy swept over her. She had let
him go alone; he was angry with her; and for three days he
would be with Abby

almost every minute. And suddenly, she heard spoken by
a mocking voice at the back of her brain: "You look at
least ten years older than Abby."

"It does seem as if he might have stayed at home,"
remarked Mrs. Pendleton; "but he is so used to having his
own way that it is harder for him to give it up than for the
rest of us. Your father says you have spoiled him."

She had spoiled him - this she saw clearly now, she who
had never seen anything clearly until it was too late for
sentimentality to work its harm. From the day of her
marriage she had spoiled him because spoiling him had
been for her own happiness as well as for his. She had
yielded to him since her chief desire had been simply to
yield and to satisfy. Her unselfishness had been merely
selfishness cloaked in the familiar aspect of duty. Another
vision of him, not as he looked when he was riding with
Abby, but as he had appeared to her in the early days of
their marriage, floated before her. He had been hers utterly
then - hers with his generous impulses, his high ideals, his
undisciplined emotions. And what had she done with him?
What were her good intentions - what was her love, even,
worth - when her intentions and her love alike had been so
lacking in wisdom? It was as if she condemned herself with
a judgment which was not her own, as if her life-long habit
of seeing only the present instant had suddenly deserted
her.

"He has been so nervous and unlike himself ever since
the failure of his play, mother," she said. "It's hard to
understand, but it meant more to him than a woman can
realize."

"I suppose so," returned Mrs. Pendleton
sympathetically. "Your father says that he spoke to him
bitterly the other day about being a failure. Of course, he
isn't one in the least, darling," she added reassuringly.

"I sometimes think that Oliver's ambition was the
greatest thing in his life," said Virginia musingly. "It meant to
him, I believe, a great deal of what the children mean to
me. He felt that it was himself, and yet in a way closer than
himself. Until that dreadful time in New York I never
understood what his work may mean to a man."

"I wish you could have gone with him, Jinny."

"I couldn't," replied Virginia, as she had replied so often
before. "I know Harry doesn't look sick," she went on with
that soft obstinacy which never attacked and yet never
yielded a point, "but something tells me that he isn't well."

An hour later, when she put him to bed, he looked so
gay and rosy that she almost allowed herself the weakness
of a regret. Suppose nothing was wrong, after all?
Suppose, as Oliver had said, she was merely "sensational"?
While she undressed in the dark for fear of awaking
Jenny, who was sleeping soundly in her crib on Virginia's
side of the bed, her mind went back over the two
harrowing days through which she had just lived, and she
asked herself, not if she had triumphed for good over
Abby, but if she had really done what was right both for
Oliver and the children. After all, the whole of life came
back simply to doing the thing that was right. So unused
was she to the kind of introspection which weighs
emotions as if they were facts, that she thought slowly,

from sheer lack of practice in the subtler processes of
reasoning. Worry, the plain, ordinary sort of worry with
which she was unhappily familiar, had not prepared her for
the piercing anguish which follows the probing of the open
wounds in one's soul. To lie sleepless over butchers' bills
was different, somehow, from lying sleepless over the
possible loss of Oliver's love. It was different, and yet, just
as she had asked herself over and over again on those
other nights if she had done right to run up so large an
account at Mr. Dewlap's, so she questioned her
conscience now in the hope of finding justification for
Oliver. "Ought I to have gone on the hunt yesterday?" she
asked kneeling, with sore and aching limbs, by the
bedside. "Had I a right to risk my life when the children are
so young that they need me every minute? It is true nothing
happened. Providence watched over me; but, then,
something might have happened, and I could have blamed
only myself. I was jealous - for the first time in my life, I
was jealous - and because I was jealous, I did wrong and
neglected my duty. Yesterday I sacrificed the children to
Oliver, and to-day I sacrificed Oliver to the children. I love
Oliver as much, but I have made the children. They came
only because I brought them into the world. I am
responsible for them - I am responsible for them," she
repeated passionately; and a moment later, she prayed
softly: "O Lord, help me to want to do what is right."

Through the night, tired and sore as she was, she hardly
closed her eyes, and she was lying wide awake, with her
hand on the railing of Jenny's crib, and her gaze on the
half-bared bough of the old mulberry

tree in the street, when a cry, or less than a cry, a small,
choking whimper, from the nursery, caused her to spring
out of bed with a start and slip into her wrapper which lay
across the edge of the quilt.

"I'm coming, darling," she called softly, and the answer
came back in Harry's voice: "Mamma, I'm afraid!"

Without waiting to put on her slippers, for one of them
had slid under the bed, she ran across the carpet and
through the doorway into the adjoining room.

"What is it, my lamb? Does anything hurt you?" she
asked anxiously.

"I'm afraid, mamma."

"What are you afraid of? Mamma is here, precious."

His little hands were hot when she clasped them, and the
pathetic wonder in his blue eyes made her heart stand still
with a fear greater than Harry's. Ever since the children had
come she had lived in terror of a serious illness attacking
them.

But Harry hated turpentine even more than he hated the
sore throat, and he protested with tears while she found
the bottle in the bathroom and swathed the end of the wire
mop in cotton. When she brought it to his bedside, he
fought so strenuously that she was obliged at last to give up. His fever

had excited him, and he sobbed violently while she applied
the bandages to his throat and chest.

"Is it any better, dear?" she asked desperately at the
end of an hour in which he had lain, weeping and angry, in
her arms.

"It feels funny. I don't like it," he sobbed, pushing her
from him.

"Then I'll send for Doctor Fraser. He'll make you well."

But he didn't want Doctor Fraser, who gave the
meanest medicines. He didn't want anybody. He hated
everybody. He hated Lucy. He hated Jenny. When at last
day came, and Marthy appeared to know what Virginia
wanted for breakfast, he was still vowing passionately that
he hated them all.

"Marthy, run at once for Doctor Fraser. Harry is quite
sick," said Virginia, pale to the lips.

"But I won't see him, mamma, and I won't take his
medicines. They are the meanest medicines."

"Perhaps he won't give you any, precious, and if he
does, mamma will taste every single one for you."

Then Jenny began to beg to get up, and Lucy, who had
been watching with dispassionate curiosity from the edge
of her little bed, was sent to amuse her until Marthy's
return.

"Suppose I had gone!" thought Virginia, while an
overwhelming thankfulness swept the anxiety out of her
mind. Not until the servant reappeared, dragging the fat
old doctor after her, did Virginia remember that she was
still barefooted, and go into her bedroom to search for her
slippers.

doctor? Is there any need to be alarmed?" she asked, and
her voice entreated him to allay her anxiety.

The doctor, a benevolent soul in a body which had run
to fat from lack of exercise, was engaged in holding
Harry's tongue down with a silver spoon, while, in spite of
the child's furious protests, he leisurely examined his throat.
When the operation was over, and Harry, crying, choking,
and kicking, rolled into Virginia's arms, she put the
question again, vaguely rebelling against the gravity in the
kind old face which was turned half away from her:

"There's nothing really the matter, is there, doctor?"

He turned to her, and laid a caressing, if heavy, hand on
her shoulder, which shook suddenly under the thin folds of
her dressing-gown. After forty years in which he had
watched suffering and death, he preserved still his native
repugnance to contact with any side of life that did not
have a comfortable feeling to it.

"Oh, we'll get him all right soon, with some good
nursing," he said gently, "but I think we're going to have a
bit of an illness on our hands."

"But not serious, doctor? It isn't anything serious?"

She felt suddenly so weak that she could hardly stand,
and instinctively she reached out to grasp the large,
protecting arm of the physician. Even then his bland
professional smile, which had in it something of the serene
detachment of the everlasting purpose of which it was a
part, did not fade, hardly changed even, on his features.

"Well, I think we'd better get the other children away. It
might be serious if they all had it on our hands."

She brought out the word with a face of such unutterable
horror that he turned his eyes away, lest the memory of her
look should interfere with his treatment of the next case he
visited. There was something infernal in the sound of the
thing which always knocked over the mothers of his
generation. He had never seen one of them who could hear
it without going to pieces on his hands; and for that reason
he never mentioned the disease by name unless they drove
him to it. They feared it as they might have feared the
plague - and even more! If the medical profession would
begin calling it something else, he wondered if the
unmitigated terror of it wouldn't partially subside?

"Well, it looks like that now, Jinny," he said soothingly;
"but we'll come out all right, never fear. It isn't a bad case,
you know, and the chief thing is to get the other children
out of danger."

At this she went over like a log on the bed, and it was
only after he had found the bottle of camphor on the
mantelpiece and held it to her nostrils, that she revived
sufficiently to sit up again. But as soon as her strength
came back, her courage surprised and rejoiced him. After
that one sign of weakness, she became suddenly strong,
and he knew by the expression of her face, for he had had
great experience with mothers, that he could count on her
not to break down again while he needed her.

"I'd like to get a tent made of some sheets and keep a
kettle bolting under it," he said, for he was an old man and
belonged to the dark ages of medicine. "But first of all I'll
get the children over to your

mother's. They'd better not come in here again. I'll ask the
servant to attend to them."

"You'll find her in the dining-room," replied Virginia,
while she straightened Harry's bed and made him more
comfortable. The weakness had passed, leaving a numbed
and hardened feeling as though she had turned to wood;
and when, a little later, she looked out of the door to wave
good-bye to Lucy and Jenny, she was amazed to find that
she felt almost indifferent. Every emotion, even her
capacity for physical sensation, seemed to respond to the
immediate need of her, to the exhaustless demands on her
bodily strength and her courage. As long as there was
anything to be done, she was sure now that she should be
able to keep up and not lose control of herself.

"May we come back soon, mamma?" asked Lucy,
standing on tiptoe to wave at her.

"Just as soon as Harry is well, darling. Ask grandpa to
pray that he will be well soon, won't you?"

"Jenny'll pay," lisped the baby, from Doctor Fraser's
arms, where, with her cap on one side an her little feet
kicking delightedly, she was beguiled by the promise of a
birthday cake over at grandma's

"I'll look in again in an hour or two," said the doctor in
his jovial tones as he swung down the stairs. Then Lucy
pattered after him, and in a few minutes the front door
closed loudly behind them, and Virginia went back to the
nursery, where Harry was coughing the strangling cough
that tore at her heart.

By nightfall he had grown very ill, and when the next
dawn came, it found her, wan, haggard, and

sleepless, fighting beside the old doctor under the
improvised tent of sheets which covered the little bed. The
thought of self went from her so utterly that she only
remembered she was alive when Marthy brought food and
tried to force it between her lips.

"But you must swallow it, ma'am. You need to keep up
your strength."

"How do you think he looks, Marthy? Does he feel
quite so hot to you? He seems to breathe a little better,
doesn't he?"

And during the long day, while the patch of sunlight
grew larger, lay for an hour like yellow silk on the
windowsill, and then slowly dwindled into the shadow, she
sat, without moving, between the bed and the table on
which stood the bottles of medicine, a glass, and a pitcher
of water. When the child slept, overcome by the stupor of
fever, she watched him, with drawn breath, lest he should
fade away from her if she were to withdraw her passionate
gaze for an instant. When he awoke and lay moaning,
while his little body shook with the long stifling gasps that
struggled between his lips, she held him tightly clasped in
her arms, with a woman's pathetic faith in the power of a
physical pressure to withstand the immaterial forces of
death. A hundred times during the day he aroused himself,
stirred faintly in his feverish sleep, and called her name in
the voice of terror with which he used to summon her in
the night.

"It isn't the black man now, darling, is it? Remember
there is no black man, and mamma is close here beside
you."

No, it wasn't the black man; he wasn't afraid of the
darkness now, but he would like to have his ship.

When she brought it, he played for a few minutes, and
dozed off still grasping the toy in his hands. At twelve the
doctor came, and again at four, when the patch of sunlight,
by which she told the hours, had begun to grow fainter on
the windowsill.

"He is better, doctor, isn't he? Don't you notice that he
struggles less when he breathes?"

He looked at her with an expression of contemplative
pity in his old watery eyes, and she gave a little cry and
stretched out her hands, blindly groping.

"Doctor, I'll do anything - anything, if you'll only save
him." An impulse to reach beyond him to some impersonal,
cosmic Power greater than he was, made her add
desperately: "I'll never ask for anything else in my life. I'll
give up everything, if you'll only promise me that you will
save him."

She stood up, drawing her thin figure, as tense as a
cord, to its full height, and beneath the flowered blue
dressing-gown her shoulder blades showed sharply under
their fragile covering of flesh. Her hair, which she had not
undone since the first shock of Harry's illness, hung in
straight folds on either side of her pallid and haggard face.
Even the colour of her eyes seemed to have changed, for
their flower-like blue had faded to a dull grey.

"If we can pull through the night, Jinny," he said huskily,
and added almost sternly, "you must bear up, so much
depends on you. Remember, it is your first serious illness,
but it may not be your last. You've got to take the pang of
motherhood along with the pleasure, my dear - "

The pang of motherhood! Long after he had left her,
and she had heard the street gate click behind

him, she sat motionless, repeating the words, by Harry's
little bed. The pang of motherhood - this was what she
was suffering - the poignant suspense, the quivering
waiting, the abject terror of loss, the unutterable anguish of
the nerves, as if one's heart were being slowly torn out of
one's body. She had had the joy, and now she was
enduring the inevitable pang which is bound up, like a
hidden pulse, in every mortal delight. Never pleasure
without pain, never growth without decay, never life
without death. The Law ruled even in love, and all the
pitiful little sacrifices which one offered to Omnipotence,
which one offered blindly to the Power that might separate,
with a flaming sword, the cause from the effect, the
substance from the shadow - what of them? While Harry
lay there, wrapped in that burning stupor, she prayed, not
as she had been taught to pray in her childhood, not with
the humble and resigned worship of civilization, but in the
wild and threatening lament of a savage who seeks to
reach the ears of an implacable deity. In the last twenty-four
hours the Unknown Power she entreated had
changed, in her imagination, to an idol who responded only
to the shedding of blood.

"Only spare my child and I will give up everything else!"
she cried from the extremity of her anguish. The sharp
edge of the bed hurt her bosom and she pressed
frantically against it. Had it been possible to lacerate her
body, to cut her flesh with knives, she might have found
some pitiable comfort in the mere physical pain. Beside the
agony in her mind, a pang of the flesh would have been
almost a joy.

breathing quietly, with his eyes closed and the toy ship on
the blanket beside him. His childish features had shrunken
in a day until they appeared only half their natural size, and
a faint bluish tinge had crept over his face, wiping out all the
sweet rosy colour. But he had swallowed a few spoonfuls
of his last cup of broth, and the painful choking sound had
ceased for a minute. The change, slight as it was, had
followed so closely upon her prayers, that, while it lasted,
she passed through one of those spiritual crises which alter
the whole aspect of life. An emotion, which was a curious
mixture of superstitious terror and religious faith, swept
over her, reviving and invigorating her heart. She had
abased herself in the dust before God - she had offered all
her life to Him if He would spare her child - and had He
not answered: Might not Harry's illness, indeed, have been
sent to punish her for her neglect? A shudder of abhorrence
passed through her as she remembered the fox-hunt, and
her passion of jealousy. The roll of blue silk, lying upstairs
in a closet in the third storey, appeared to her now not as a
temptation to vanity, but as a reminder of the mortal sin
which had almost cost her the life of her child. And
suppose God had not stopped her in time - suppose she
had gone to Atlantic City as Oliver had begged her to do?

In the room the light faded softly, melting first like frost
from the mirror in the corner beyond the Japanese screen,
creeping slowly across the marble surface of the
washstand, lingering, in little ripples, on the green sash of
the windowsill. Out of doors it was still day, and from
where she sat by Harry's bed, she could see, under the
raised tent, every detail

of the street standing out distinctly in the grey twilight.
Across the way the houses were beginning to show lights
at the windows, and the old lamplighter was balancing
himself unsteadily on his ladder at the corner. On the
mulberry tree near the crossing the broad bronze leaves
swung back and forth in the wind, which sighed restlessly
around the house and drove the naked tendrils of a
summer vine against the green shutters at the window. The
fire had gone down, and after she had made it up very
softly, she bent over Harry again, as if she feared that he
might have slipped out of her grasp while she had crossed
the room.

"If he only lives, I will let everything else go. I will think
of nothing except my children. It will make no difference to
me if I do look ten years older than Abby does. Nothing
on earth will make any difference to me, if only God will let
him get well."

And with the vow, it seemed to her that she laid her
youth down on the altar of that unseen Power whose
mercy she invoked. Let her prayer only be heard and she
would demand nothing more of life - she would spend all
her future years in the willing service of love. Was it
possible that she had imagined herself unhappy thirty-six
hours ago - thirty-six hours ago when her child was not
threatened? As she looked back on her past life, it seemed
to her that every minute had been crowned with happiness.
Even the loss of her newborn baby appeared such a little
thing - such a little thing beside the loss of Harry, her only
son. Mere freedom from anxiety showed to her now as a
condition of positive bliss.

Six o'clock struck, and Marthy knocked at the door
with a cup of milk.

"Do you think he'll be able to swallow any of it?" she
asked, and there were tears in her eyes.

"He is better, Marthy, I am sure he is better. Has
mother been here this afternoon?"

"She stopped at the door, but she didn't like to come in
on account of the children. They are both well, she says,
and send you their love. Do you want any more water in
the kettle, ma'am?"

The kettle, which was simmering away beside Harry's
bed, under the tent of sheets, was passed to Marthy
through the crack in the door; and when in a few minutes
the girl returned with fresh water, Virginia whispered to her
that he had taken three spoonfuls of milk.

"And he let me mop his throat with turpentine," she said
in quivering tones. "I am sure - oh, I am sure he is better."

"I am praying every minute," replied Marthy, weeping;
and it seemed suddenly to Virginia that a wave of
understanding passed between her and the ignorant mulatto
girl, whom she had always regarded as of different clay
from herself. With that miraculous power of grief to level all
things, she felt that the barriers of knowledge, of race, of all
the pitiful superiorities with which human beings have
obscured and decorated the underlying spirit of life, had
melted back into the nothingness from which they had
emerged in the beginning. This feeling of oneness, which
would have surprised and startled her yesterday, appeared
so natural to her now, that, after the first instant of
recognition, she hardly thought of it again.

"Thank you, Marthy," she answered gently, and closing
the door, went back to her chair under the

raised corner of the sheet. When the doctor came at nine
o'clock she was sitting there, in the same position, so still
and tense that she seemed hardly to be breathing, so ashen
grey that the sheet hanging above her head showed deadly
white by contrast with her face. In those three hours she
knew that the clinging tendrils of personal desire had
relaxed their hold forever on life and youth.

"If he doesn't get worse, we'll pull through," said the
doctor, turning from his examination of Harry to lay his
hand, which felt as heavy as lead, on her shoulder. "We've
an even chance - if his heart doesn't go back on us." And
he added, "Most mothers are good nurses, Jinny, but I
never saw a better one than you are - unless it was your
own mother. You get it from her, I reckon. I remember
when you went through diphtheria how she sent your father
to stay with one of the neighbours, and shut herself up with
old Ailsey to nurse you. I don't believe she undressed or
closed her eyes for a week."

Her own mother! So she was not the only one who had
suffered this anguish - other women, many women, had
been through it before she was born. It was a part of that
immemorial pang of motherhood of which the old doctor
had spoken. "But, was I ever in danger? Was I as ill as
Harry?" she asked.

"For twenty-four hours we thought you'd slip through
our fingers every minute. 'Twas only your mother's nursing
that kept you alive - I've told her that twenty times. She
never spared herself an instant, and, it may have been
my imagination, but

she never seemed to me to be the same woman afterwards.
Something had gone out of her."

Now she understood, now she knew, something had
gone out of her, also, and this something was youth. No
woman who had fought with death for a child could ever be
the same afterwards - could ever value again the small
personal joys, when she carried the memory of supreme joy
or supreme anguish buried within her heart. She
remembered that her mother had never seemed young to
her, not even in her earliest childhood; and she understood
now why this had been so, why the deeper experiences of
life rob the smaller ones of all vividness, of all poignancy. It
had been so easy for her mother to give up little things, to
deny herself, to do without to make no further demands on
life after the great demands had been granted her. How
often had she said unthinkingly in her girlhood, "Mother,
you never want anything for yourself." Ah, she knew now
what it meant, and with the knowledge a longing seized her
to throw herself into her mother's arms, to sob out her
understanding and her sympathy, to let her feel before it
was too late that she comprehended every step of the way,
every throb of the agony!

"I'd spend the night with you, Jinny, if I didn't have to be
with Milly Carrington, who has two children down with it,"
said the doctor; "but if there's any change, get Marthy to
come for me. If not, I'll be sure to look in again before
daybreak."

When he had gone, she moved the night lamp to the
corner of the washstand, and after swallowing hastily a cup
of coffee which Marthy had brought to her before the
doctor's visit, and which had grown

quite tepid and unpalatable, she resumed her patient watch
under the raised end of the sheet. The whole of life, the
whole of the universe even, had narrowed down for her
into that faint circle of light which the lamp drew around
Harry's little bed. It was as if this narrow circle beat with a
separate pulse, divided from the rest of existence by its
intense, its throbbing vitality. Here was concentrated for her
all that the world had to offer of hope, fear, rapture, or
anguish. The littleness and the terrible significance of the
individual destiny were gathered into that faintly quivering
centre of space - so small a part of the universe, and yet
containing the whole universe within itself!

Outside, in the street, she could see a half-bared bough
of the mulberry tree, arching against a square of window,
from which the white curtains were drawn back; and in
order to quiet her broken and disjointed thoughts, she
began to count the leaves as they fell, one by one, turning
softly at the stem, and then floating out into the darkness
beyond. "One. Two. How long that leaf takes to loosen. He
is better. The doctor certainly thought that he was better. If
he only gets well. O God, let him get well, and I will serve
you all my life! Three - four - five - For twenty-four hours
we thought you would slip through our fingers. Somebody
said that - somebody - it must have been the doctor. And
he was talking of me, not of Harry. That was twenty-six
years ago, and my mother was enduring then all this agony
that I am feeling to-night. Twenty-six years ago - perhaps
at this very hour, she sat beside me alone as I am sitting
now by Harry. And before that other

women went through it. All the world over, wherever there
are mothers - north, south, east, west - from the first baby
that was born on the earth - they have every one suffered
what I am suffering now - for it is the pang of motherhood!
To escape it one must escape birth and escape the love that
is greater than one's self." And she understood suddenly
that suffering and love are inseparable, that when one loves
another more than one's self, one has opened the gate by
which anguish will enter. She had forgotten to count the
leaves, and when she remembered and looked again, the
last one had fallen. Against the parted white curtains, the
naked bough arched black and solitary. Even the small
silent birds that had swayed dejectedly to and fro on the
branches all day had flown off into the darkness. Presently,
the light in the window went out, and as the hours wore on,
a fine drizzling rain began to fall, as soft as tears, from the
starless sky over the mulberry tree. A sense of isolation
greater than any she had ever known attacked her like a
physical chill, and rising, she went over to the fire and
stirred the pile of coal into a flame. She was alone in her
despair, and she realized, with a feeling of terror, that one is
always alone when one despairs, that there is a secret
chamber in every soul where neither love nor sympathy can
follow one. If Oliver were here beside her - if he were
standing close to her in that throbbing circle around the
bed - she would still be separated from him by the
immensity of that inner space which is not measured by
physical distances. "No, even if he were here, he could not
reach me," she said, and an instant later, with one of those
piercing illuminations which visit even perfectly

normal women in moments of great intensity, she
thought quickly, "If every woman told the truth
to herself, would she say that there is something in her which love
has never reached?" Then, reproaching herself because she
had left the bed for a minute, she went back again and bent
over the unconscious child, her whole slender body curving
itself passionately into an embrace. His face was ashen
white, except where the skin around his mouth was
discoloured with a faint bluish tinge. His flesh, even his
bones, appeared to have shrunk almost away in twenty-four
hours. It was impossible to imagine that he was the
rosy, laughing boy, who had crawled into her arms only
two nights ago. The disease held him like some unseen
spiritual enemy, against which all physical weapons were as
useless as the little toys of a child. How could one fight that
sinister power which had removed him to an illimitable
distance while he was still in her arms? The troubled stupor,
which had in it none of the quiet and the restfulness of
sleep, terrorized her as utterly as if it had been the personal
spirit of evil. The invisible forces of Life and Death seemed
battling in the quivering air within that small circle of light.

While she bent over him, he stirred, raised himself, and
then fell back in a paroxysm of coughing. The violence of
the spasm shook his fragile little body as a rough wind
shakes a flower on a stalk. Over his face the bluish tinge
spread like a shadow, and into his eyes there came the
expression of wondering terror which she had seen before
only in the eyes of young startled animals. For an instant it
seemed almost as if the devil of disease were wrestling inside

of him, as if the small vital force she called life would be
beaten out in the struggle. Then the agony passed; the
strangling sound ceased, and he grew quiet, while she
wiped the poison from his mouth and nostrils, and made
him swallow a few drops of milk out of a teaspoon.

At the moment, while she fell on her knees by his
bedside, it seemed to her that she had reached that deep
place beyond which there is nothing.

* * * * * * *

"You've pulled him through. We'll have him out of bed
before many days now," said the old doctor at daybreak,
and he added cheerfully, "By the way, your husband came
in the front door with me. He wanted to rush up here at
once, but I'm keeping him away because he is obliged to
go back to the bank."

"Poor Oliver," said Virginia gently. "It is terrible on him.
He must be so anxious." But even while she uttered the
words, she was conscious of a curious sensation of
unreality, as though she were speaking of a person whom
she had known in another life. It was three days since she
had seen Oliver, and in those three days she had lived and
died many times.

CHAPTER IX
THE PROBLEM OF THE SOUTH
"FATHER, I want to
marry John Henry," said
Susan, just as she had said almost ten years ago,
"Father, I want to go to college."

It was a March afternoon, ashen and windy, with flocks
of small fleecy clouds hurrying across a changeable blue
sky, and the vague, roving scents of early spring in the air.
After his dinner, which he had taken for more than fifty
years precisely at two o'clock, Cyrus had sat down for a
peaceful pipe on the back porch before returning to the
office. Between the sunken bricks in the little walled-in
yard, blades of vivid green grass had shot up, seeking light
out of darkness, and along the grey wooden ledge of the area
the dauntless sunflowers were unfolding their small stunted
leaves. On the railing of the porch a moth-eaten cat - the only
animal for whom Cyrus entertained the remotest respect - was
contentedly licking the shabby fur on her side.

"Father, I want to marry John Henry," repeated
Susan, raising her voice to a higher key and towering
like a flesh and blood image of Victory over the sagging
cane chair in which he sat.

Taking his pipe from his mouth, he looked up at her;
and so little had he altered in ten years, that the

thought flashed through her mind that he had actually
suffered no change of expression since the afternoon on
which she had asked him to send her to college. As a man
he may not have been impressive, but as a defeating force
who could say that he had not attained his fulfilment? It was
as if the instinct of patriarchal tyranny had entrenched itself
in his person as in a last stronghold of the disappearing
order. When he died many things would pass away out of
Dinwiddie - not only the soul and body of Cyrus
Treadwell, but the vanishing myth of the "strong man," the
rule of the individual despot, the belief in the inalienable
right of the father to demand blood sacrifices. For in
common with other men of his type, he stood equally for
industrial advancement and for domestic immobility. The
body social might move, but the units that formed the body
social must remain stationary.

"Well, I don't think I'd worry about marrying, if I were
you," he replied, not unkindly, for Susan inspired him with
a respect against which he had struggled in vain. "You are
very comfortable now, ain't you? And I'll see that you are
well provided for after my death. John Henry hasn't
anything except his salary, I reckon."

Marriage as an economic necessity was perfectly
comprehensible to him, but it was difficult for him to
conceive of anybody indulging in it simply as a matter of
sentiment. That April afternoon was so far away now that
it had ceased to exist even as an historical precedent.

"Yes, but I want to marry him, and I am going to,"
replied Susan decisively.

"What arrangements would you make about your
mother? It seems to me that your mother needs your
attention."

"Of course I couldn't leave mother. If you agree to it,
John Henry is willing to come here to live as long as I have
to look after her. If not, I shall take her away with me; I
have spoken to her, and she is perfectly willing to go."

The ten years which had left Cyrus at a standstill had
developed his daughter from a girl into a woman. She
spoke with the manner of one who realizes that she holds
the situation in her hands, and he yielded to this assumption
of strength as he would have yielded ten years ago had she
been clever enough to use it against him. It was his own
manner in a more attractive guise, if he had only known it;
and the Treadwell determination to get the thing it wanted
most was asserting itself in Susan's desire to win John
Henry quite as effectively as it had asserted itself in Cyrus's
passion to possess the Dinwiddie and Central Railroad.
Though the ends were different, the quality which
moved father and daughter towards these different ends
was precisely the same. In Cyrus, it was force degraded; in
Susan, it was force refined; but the peculiar attribute which
distinguished and united them was the possession of the
power to command events.

"Take your mother away?" he repeated. "Why, where
on earth would you take her?"

"Then you'll have to agree to John Henry's coming here.
It won't make any difference to you, of course. You
needn't see him except at the table."

with the cowardice natural to the habitual bully. The girl had
character, certainly, and though he disliked character in a
woman, he was obliged to admit that she had not failed to
make an impression.

"James won't care, and besides," she added magnificently,
"it is none of his business."

"And it's none of mine, either, I reckon," said Cyrus,
with a chuckle.

"Well, of course, it's more of mine," agreed Susan, and
her delicious laugh drowned his chuckle.

She had won her point, and strange to say, she had
pleased him rather than otherwise. He had suddenly a
comfortable feeling in his digestive organs as well as a
sense of virtue in his soul. It was impossible not to feel
proud of her as she towered there above him with her
superb body, as fine and as supple as the body of a race
horse, and her splendid courage that made him wish while
he looked at her that she, instead of James, had been born
a male. She was not pretty - she had never been
pretty - but he realized for the first time that there might be
something better even for a woman than beauty.

"Thank you, father," she said as she turned away, and he
was glad again to feel that she had conquered him. To be
conquered by one's own blood was different from being
conquered by a business acquaintance.

"You mustn't disturb the household, you know," he said,
but his voice did not sound as dry as he had endeavoured
to make it.

"I shan't disturb anybody," responded Susan, with the
amiability of a woman who, having gained her point, can
afford to be pleasant. Then, wheeling

about suddenly on the threshold, she added, "By the way, I
forgot to tell you that Mandy was here three times this
morning asking to see you. She is in trouble about her son.
He was arrested for shooting a policeman over at Cross's
Corner, you know, and the people down there are so
enraged, she's afraid of a lynching. You read about it in
the paper, didn't you?"

Yes, he had read about the shooting - Cross's Corner
was only three miles away - but, if he had ever known the
name of Mandy's son, he had forgotten it so completely
that seeing it in print had suggested nothing to his mind.

"Well, she doesn't expect me to interfere, does she?" he
asked shortly.

"I believe she thought you might go over and do
something - I don't know what - help her engage a lawyer
probably. She was very pitiable, but after all, what can one
do for a negro that shoots a policeman? There's Miss Willy
calling me!"

She ran indoors, and taking his pipe, which was still
smoking, from his mouth, Cyrus leaned back in his chair
and stared intently at the small fleecy clouds in the west.
The cat, having cleaned herself to her satisfaction, jumped
down from the railing, and after rubbing against his thin
legs, leaped gently into his lap.

"Tut-tut!" he remarked grimly; but he did not attempt to
dislodge the animal, and it may be that some secret part of
him was gratified by the attention. He was still sitting there
some minutes later, when he heard the warning click of the
back gate, and the figure of Mandy, appeared at the corner of the

kitchen wall. Rising from his chair, he shook the cat from
his knees, and descending the steps, met the woman in the
centre of the walk, where a few hardy dandelions were
flattened like buttons between the bricks.

"Howdy, Mandy. I'm sorry to hear that you're having
trouble with that boy of yours." He saw at once that she
was racked by a powerful emotion, and any emotion
affected him unpleasantly as something extravagant and
indecent. Sweat had broken out in glistening clusters over
her face and neck, and her eyes, under the stray wisps of
hair, had in them an expression of dumb and
uncomprehending submission.

"Ain't you gwineter git 'im away, Marster?" she began,
and stronger even than her terror was the awe of Cyrus
which subdued her voice to a tone of servile entreaty.

"Why did he shoot a policeman? He knew he'd hang for
it," returned Cyrus sharply, and he added, "Of course I
can't get him away. He'll have to take his deserts. Your
race has got to learn that when you break the law, you
must pay for it."

At first he had made as if to push by her, but when she
did not move, he thought better of it and waited for her to
speak. The sound of her heavy breathing, like the breathing
of some crouching beast, awoke in him a curious repulsion.
If only one could get rid of such creatures after their first
youth was over! If only every careless act could perish
with the impulse that led to it! If only the dried husks of
pleasure did not turn to weapons against one! These
thoughts - or disjointed snatches of thoughts like
these - passed

in a confused whirl through his brain as he stood there. For
an instant it was almost as if his accustomed lucidity of
purpose had deserted him; then the disturbance ceased,
and with the renewal of order in his mind, his life-long habit
of prompt decision returned to him.

"Your race has got to learn that when you break the law
you must pay for it," he repeated - for on that sound
principle of justice he felt that he must unalterably take his
stand.

"He's all de boy I'se got, Marster," rejoined the negress,
with an indifference to the matter of justice which had led
others of her colour into those subterranean ways where
abstract principles are not. "You ain' done furgot 'im,
Marster," she added piteously. "He 'uz born jes two mont's
atter Miss Lindy turns me outer hyer - en he's jes ez w'ite
ez ef'n he b'longed ter w'ite folks."

But she had gone too far - she had outraged that curious
Anglo-Saxon instinct in Cyrus which permitted him to sin
against his race's integrity, yet forbade him to
acknowledge, even to himself, that he bore any part in the
consequences of that sin. Illogical, he might have admitted,
but there are some truths so poisonous that no honest man
could breathe the same air with them.

Taking out his pocket-book, he slowly drew a fifty
dollar bill from its innermost recesses, and as slowly
unfolded it. He always handled money in that careful
fashion - a habit which he had inherited from his father and
his grandfather before him, and of which he was entirely
unconscious. Filtering down through so many generations,
the mannerism had ceased at last

to be merely a physical peculiarity, and had become
strangely spiritual in its suggestion. The craving for
possession, the singleness of desire, the tenacity of grasp,
the dread of relinquishment, the cold-blooded
determination to keep intact the thing which it had cost so
much to acquire - all that was bound up in the spirit of
Cyrus Treadwell, and all that would pass at last with that
spirit from off the earth, was expressed in the gesture with
which he held out the bit of paper to the woman who had
asked for his help. "Take this - it is all I can do for you,"
he said, "and don't come wh ning around me any more.
Black or white, the man that commits a murder has got to
hang for it."

A sound broke from the regress that resembled a human
cry of grief less than it did the inarticulate moan of an
animal in mortal pain. Then it stopped suddenly, strangled
by that dull weight of usage beneath which the primal
impulse in her was crushed back into silence. Instinctively,
as if in obedience to some reflex action, she reached out
and took the money from his hand, and still instinctively,
with the dazed look of one who performs in delirium the
customary movements of every day, she fell back, holding
her apron deprecatingly aside while he brushed past her.
And in her eyes as she gazed after him there dawned the
simple wonder of the brute that asks of Life why it suffers.

Beyond the alley into which the gate opened, Cyrus
caught sight of Gabriel's erect figure hurrying down the side
street in the direction of the Old Ladies' Home, and calling
out to him, he scrambled over the ash heaps and tomato
cans, and emerged, irritated but smiling, into the sunlight.

"I'm on my way to the bank. We'll walk down together,"
he remarked almost gently, for, though he disapproved of
Gabriel's religious opinions and distrusted his financial
judgment, the war-like little rector represented the single
romance of his life.

"I had intended stopping at the Old Ladies' Home, but
I'll go on with you instead," responded Gabriel. "I've just
had a message from one of our old servants calling me
down to Cross's Corner," he pursued, "so I'm in a bit of a
hurry. That's a bad thing, that murder down there
yesterday, and I'm afraid it will mean trouble for the
negroes. Mr. Blylie, who came to market this morning, told
me a crowd had tried to lynch the fellow last night."

"Well, they've got to hang when they commit hanging
crimes," replied Cyrus stubbornly. "There's no way out of
that. It's just, ain't it?"

"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth - that's the
law of God, ain't it?"

"The old law, yes - but why not quote the law of Christ
instead?"

"It wouldn't do - not with the negroes," returned Cyrus,
who entertained for the Founder of Christianity something
of the sentimental respect mingled with an innate distrust of
His common-sense with which he regarded His disciple.

"We can't condemn it until we've tried it," said Gabriel
thoughtfully, and he went on after a moment:

they are so grave a responsibility - so grave a
responsibility. Of course, we aren't to blame - we didn't
bring them here; and yet I sometimes feel as if we had
really done so."

This was a point of view which Cyrus had never
considered, and he felt an immediate suspicion of it. It
looked, somehow, as if it were insidiously leading the way
to an appeal for money.

"It's the best thing that could have happened to them," he
replied shortly. "If they'd remained in Africa, they'd never
have been civilized or - or Christianized."

"Ah, that is just where the responsibility rests on us. We
stand for civilization to them; we stand even - or at least
we used to stand - for Christianity. They haven't learned
yet to look above or beyond us, and the example we set
them is one that they are condemned, for sheer lack of any
finer vision, to follow. The majority of them are still hardly
more than uneducated children, and that very fact makes
an appeal to one's compassion which becomes at times
almost unbearable."

But this was more than Cyrus could stand even from the
rector, whose conversation he usually tolerated because of
the perverse, inexplicable liking he felt for the man. The
charm that Gabriel exercised over him was almost feminine
in its subtlety and in its utter defiance of any rational
sanction. It may have been that his nature, incapable
though it was of love, was not entirely devoid of the rarer
capacity for friendship - or it may have been that, with the
inscrutable irony which appears to control all human
attractions, the caged brutality in his heart was soothed by
the unconscious

flattery of the other's belief in him. Now,
however, he felt that Gabriel's highfaluting nonsense was
carrying him away. It was well enough to go on
like that in the pulpit; but on week days, when there was
business to think of and every minute might mean the loss of a
dollar, there was no use dragging in either religion or
sentiment. Had he put his thoughts plainly, he would probably
have said: "That's not business, Gabriel. The trouble with
you - and with most of you old-fashioned Virginians - is that
you don't understand the first principles of business." These
words, indeed, were almost on his lips, when, catching the rector's
innocent glance wandering round to him, he contented himself with
remarking satircally:

"Well, you were always up in the clouds. It doesn't hurt
you, I reckon, though I doubt if it does much toward
keeping your pot boiling."

"I must turn off here," said Gabriel gently. "It's the
shortest way to Cross's Corner."

"Do you think any good will come of your going?"

"Probably not - but I couldn't refuse."

Much as he respected Cyrus, he was not sorry to part
from him, for their walk together had left him feeling
suddenly old and incompetent to battle with the problems
of life. He knew that Cyrus, even though he liked him,
considered him a bit of a fool, and with a humility which
was unusual in him (for in his heart he was absolutely sure
that his own convictions were right and that Cyrus's were
wrong) he began to ask himself if, by any chance, the
other's verdict could be secretly justified. Was he in reality
the failure that Cyrus believed him to be? Or was it merely

that he had drifted into that "depressing view" of existence
against which he so earnestly warned his parishioners?
Perhaps it wasn't Cyrus after all who had produced this
effect. Perhaps the touch of in digestion he had felt after
dinner had not entirely disappeared. Perhaps it meant that
he was "getting on" - sixty-five his last birthday.
Perhaps - but already the March wind, fresh and bud-scented,
was blowing away his despondency. Already he
was beginning to feel again that fortifying conviction that
whatever was unpleasant could not possibly be natural.

Ahead of him the straight ashen road flushed to pale red
where it climbed a steep hillside, and when he gained the
top, the country lay before him in all the magic loveliness of
early spring. Out of the rosy earth innumerable points of
tender green were visible in the sunlight and invisible
again beneath the faintly rippling shadows that filled the
hollows. From every bough, from every bush, from every
creeper which clung trembling to the rail fences, this wave
of green, bursting through the sombre covering of winter,
quivered, as delicate as foam, in the brilliant sunshine. On
either side labourers were working, and where the ploughs
pierced the soil they left narrow channels of darkness.

In the soul of Gabriel, that essence of the spring, which
is immortally young and restless, awakened and gave him
back his youth, as it gave the new grass to the fields and
the longing for joy to the hearts of the ploughmen. He
forgot that he was "getting on." He forgot the unnatural
depression which had made him imagine for a moment that
the world was a more

difficult place than he had permitted himself to believe - so
difficult a place, indeed, that for some people there could
be no solution of its injustice, its brutality, its dissonance, its
inequalities. The rapture in the song of the bluebirds was
sweeter than the voice of Cyrus to which he had listened.
And in a meadow on the right, an old grey horse, scarred,
dim-eyed, spavined, stood resting one crooked leg, while
he gazed wistfully over the topmost rail of the fence into the
vivid green of the distance - for into his aching old bones,
also, there had passed a little of that longing for joy which
was born of the miraculous softness and freshness of the
spring. To him, as well as to Gabriel and to the ploughmen
and to the bluebirds flitting, like bits of fallen sky, along the
"snake fences," Nature, the great healer, had brought her
annual gift of the resurrection of hope.

"Cyrus means well," thought Gabriel, with a return of that
natural self-confidence without which no man can exist
happily and make a living. "He means well, but he takes a
false view of life." And he added after a minute: "It's odd
how the commercial spirit seems to suck a man dry when it
once gets a hold on him."

He walked on rapidly, leaving the old horse and the
ploughmen behind him, and around his energetic little
figure the grey dust, as fine as powder, spun in swirls and
eddies before the driving wind, which had grown
boisterous. As he moved there alone in the deserted road,
with his long black coat flapping against his legs, he
appeared so insignificant and so unheroic that an observer
would hardly have suspected that the greatest belief on the
earth - the belief in

Life - in its universality in spite of its littleness, in its
justification in spite of its cruelties - that this belief shone
through his shrunken little body as a flame shines through a
vase.

At the end of the next mile, midway between Dinwiddie
and Cross's Corner, stood the small log cabin of the
former slave who had sent for him, and as he approached
the narrow path that led, between oyster shells, from the
main road to the single flat brown rock before the
doorstep, he noticed with pleasure how tranquil and
happy the little rustic home appeared under the windy
brightness of the March sky.

"People may say what they please, but there never were
happier or more contented creatures than the darkeys," he
thought. "I doubt if there's another peasantry in the world
that is half so well off or half so picturesque."

A large yellow rooster, pecking crumbs from the
threshold, began to scold shrilly, and at the sound, the old
servant, a decrepit negress in a blue gingham dress,
hobbled out into the path and stood peering at him under
her hollowed palm. Her forehead was ridged and furrowed
beneath her white turban, and her bleared old eyes looked
up at him with a blind and groping effort at recognition.

sunlight, with her palsied hand, which was gnarled and
roughened until it resembled the shell of a walnut, curving
over her eyes, he felt that a quality at once alien and
enigmatical separated her not only from himself, but from
every other man or woman who was born white instead of
black. He had lived beside her all his life - and yet he could
never understand her, could never reach her, could never
even discern the hidden stuff of which she was made. He
could make laws for her, but no child of a white mother
could tell whether those laws ever penetrated that surface
imitation of the superior race and reached the innate
differences of thought, feeling, and memory which
constituted her being. Was it development or mimicry that
had brought her up out of savagery and clothed her in her
blue gingham dress and her white turban, as in the outward
covering of civilization?

Her look of crumbling age and the witch-like groping of
her glance had cast a momentary spell over him. When it
was gone, he said cheerfully:

"You mustn't be having troubles at your time of life, Aunt
Mehitable," and in his voice there was the subtle
recognition of all that she had meant to his family in the
past, of all that his family had meant to her. Her claim upon
him was the more authentic because it existed only in his
imagination, and in hers. The tie that knit them together was
woven of impalpable strands, but it was unbreakable while
he and his generation were above the earth.

hornet's nes' hang in peace whar de Lawd put hit - but de
young dey's diff'rent."

"I suppose the neighbourhood is stirred up about the
murder. What in God's name was that boy thinking of?"

The old blood crimes that never ceased where the white
and the black races came together! The old savage folly
and the new freedom! The old ignorance, the old lack of
understanding, and the new restlessness, the new enmity!

"He wan' thinkin' er nuttin', Marse Gabriel. We ole uns
kin set down en steddy, but de young dey up en does wid
dere brains ez addled ez de inside uv er bad aig. 'T wan'
dat ar way in de old days w'en we all hed de say so ez ter
w'at wuz en w'at wan't de way ter behave."

Like an institution left from the ruins of the feudal system,
which had crumbled as all ancient and decrepit things must
crumble when the wheels of progress roll over them, she
stood there wrapped in the beliefs and customs of that
other century to which she belonged. Her sentiments had
clustered about the past, as his had done, until the
border-line between the romance and the actuality had vanished.
She could not help him because she, also, possessed the
retrospective, not the constructive, vision. He was not
conscious of these thoughts, and yet, although he was
unconscious of them, they coloured his reflections while he
stood there in the sunlight, which had begun to fall aslant
the blasted pine by the roadside. The wind had lowered
until it came like the breath of spring, bud-scented,
caressing, provocative. Even Gabriel, whose optimism lay
in his blood and bone

rather than in his intellect, yielded for a moment to this
call of the spring as one might yield to the delicious
melancholy of a vagrant mood. The long straight road,
without bend or fork, had warmed in the paling sunlight to
the colour of old ivory; in a neighbouring field a young
maple tree rose in a flame of buds from the ridged earth
where the ploughing was over; and against the azure sky in
the south a flock of birds drifted up, like blown smoke,
from the marshes.

"Tell me your trouble, then," he said, dropping into the
cane-seated chair she had brought out of the cabin and
placed between the flat stone at the doorstep and the
well-brink, on which the yellow rooster stood spreading his
wings. But Aunt Mehitable had returned to the cabin, and
when she reappeared she was holding out to him a cracked
saucer on which there was a piece of preserved
watermelon rind and a pewter spoon.

"Dish yer is de ve'y same sort er preserves yo' mouf
use'n ter water fur w'en you wuz a chile," she remarked as
she handed the sweet to him. Whatever her anxiety or
affliction could have been, the importance of his visit had
evidently banished it from her mind. She hovered over him
as his mother may have done when he was in his cradle,
while the cheerful self-effacement in which slavery had
trained her lent a pathetic charm to her manner.

"How peaceful it looks," he thought, sitting there, with
the saucer in his hand, and his eyes on the purple shadows
that slanted over the ploughed fields. "You have a good
view of the low-grounds, Aunt Mehitable," he said aloud,
and added immediately, "What's that noise in the road? Do
you hear it?"

Seated on the flat stone, with her hands hanging over her
knees, and her turbaned head swaying gently back and
forth as she talked, she waited as tranquilly as the rock
waited for the inevitable processes of nature. The patience
in her look was the dumb patience of inanimate things; and
her half-bared feet, protruding from the broken soles of her
shoes, were encrusted with the earth of the fields until one
could hardly distinguish them from the ground on which
they rested.

"It looks as if there was something like a fight down
yonder by the blasted pine," said the rector, rising from his
chair. "I reckon I'd better go and see what they're
quarrelling about."

The negress rose also, and her dim eyes followed him
while he went down the little path between the borders of
oyster shells. As he turned into the open stretch of the
road, he glanced back at her, and stopping for a moment,
waved his hand with a gesture that was careless and
reassuring. The fight, or whatever it was that made the
noise, was still some distance ahead in the shadow of the
pine-tree, and as he walked towards it he was thinking
casually of other matters - of the wretched condition of the
road after the winter rains, of the need of greater thrift
among the farmers, both

white and black, of the touch of indigestion which still
troubled him. There was nothing to warn him that he was
approaching the supreme event in his life, nothing to
prepare him for a change beside which all the changes of
the past would appear as unsubstantial as shadows. His
soul might have been the soul in the grass, so little did its
coming or its going affect the forces around him.

"If this shooting pain keeps up, I'll have to get a
prescription from Doctor Fraser," he thought, and the next
minute he cried out suddenly: "God help us!" and began to
run down the road in the direction of the blasted pine.
There was hardly a breath between the instant when he had
thought of his indigestion and the instant when he had called
out sharply on the name of God, yet that flash of time had
been long enough to change the ordinary man into the hero.
The spark of greatness in his nature flamed up and
irradiated all that had been merely dull and common clay a
moment before. As he ran on, with his coat tails flapping
around him, and his thin legs wobbling from the
unaccustomed speed at which he moved, he was so
unimposing a figure that only the Diety who judges the
motives, not the actions, of men would have been
impressed by the spectacle. Even the three hearty
brutes - and it took him but a glance to see that two of
them were drunk, and that the third, being a sober rascal,
was the more dangerous - hardly ceased their merry
torment of the young negro in their midst when he came up
with them.

"I know that boy," he said. "He is the grandson of Aunt
Mehitable. What are you doing with him?"

"He jostled her," observed one of the drunken men
judicially, "an' we'll be roasted befo' we'll let a damn nigger
jostle a white lady - even if she ain't a lady - in these here
parts."

In the rector's bone and fibre, drilled there by the ages
that had shaped his character before he began to be, there
was all the white man's horror of an insult to his
womankind. But deeper even than this lay his personal
feeling of responsibility for any creature whose fathers had
belonged to him and had toiled in his service.

"I believe the boy is telling the truth," he said, and he
added with one of his characteristic bursts of
impulsiveness, "but whether he is or not, you are too drunk
to judge."

There was going to be a battle, he saw, and in the
swiftness with which he discerned this, he made his eternal
choice between the preacher and the fighter. Stripping off
his coat, he reached down for a stick from the roadside;
then spinning round on the three of them

he struck out with all his strength, while there floated
before him the face of a man he had killed in his first charge
at Manassas. The old fury, the old triumph, the old blood-stained
splendour returned to him. He smelt the smoke
again, he heard the boom of the cannon, the long sobbing
rattle of musketry, and the thought stabbed through him,
"God forgive me for loving a fight!"

Then the fight stopped. There was a patter of feet in
the dust as the young negro fled like a hare up the road in
the direction of Dinwiddie. One of the men leaped the
fence and disappeared into the tangled thicket beyond;
while the other two, sobered suddenly, began walking
slowly over the ploughed ground on the right. Ten minutes
later Gabriel was lying alone, with the blood oozing from
his mouth, on the trodden weeds by the roadside. The
shadow of the pine had not moved since he watched it; on
the flat rock in front of the cabin the old negress stood,
straining her eyes in the faint sunshine; and up the long road
the March wind still blew, as soft, as provocative, as bud-scented.

BOOK THIRD
THE ADJUSTMENT

CHAPTER I
THE CHANGING ORDER
"SO THIS life," thought Virginia, while she folded her
mourning veil, and laid it away in the top drawer of her
bureau. Like all who are suddenly brought face to face with
tragedy, she felt at the moment that there was nothing else
in existence. All the sweetness of the past had vanished so
utterly that she remembered it only as one remembers a
dream from which one has abruptly awakened. Nothing
remained except this horrible sense of the pitiful
insufficiency of life, of the inexorable finality of death. It
was a week since the rector's death, and in that week she
had passed out of her girlhood forever. Of all the things
that she had lived through, this alone had had the power to
crush the hope in her and the odour of crepe which floated
through the crack of the drawer sickened her with its
reminder of that agonized sense of loss which had settled
over her at the funeral. She was only thirty - the best of her
life should still be in the future - yet as she looked back at
her white face in the mirror it seemed to her that she should
never emerge from the leaden hopelessness which had
descended like a weight on her body. Above the harsh
black of her dress, which added ten years to her
appearance, she saw the darkened circles rimming her
eyes, the faded pallor of her skin, the
Page 386

lustreless wave of her hair, which had once had a satiny
sheen on its ripples.

"Grief makes a person look like this," she thought. "I shall
never be a girl again - Oliver was right: I am the kind to
break early." Then, because to think of herself in the midst
of such sorrow seemed to her almost wicked, she turned
away from the mirror, and laid her crepe-trimmed hat on the shelf
in the wardrobe. She was wearing a dress of black Henrietta cloth,
which had been borrowed from one of her neighbours who had
worn mourning, and the blouse and sleeves hung with an
exaggerated fullness over her thin arms and bosom. All that
had distinguished her beauty - the radiance, the colour the
flower-like delicacy of bloom and sweetness - these were
blotted out by her grief and by the voluminous mourning
dress of the nineties. A week had changed her, as even
Harry's illness had not changed her, from a girl into a
woman; and horrible beyond belief, with the exception of
her mother, it had changed nothing else in the universe! The
tragedy that had ruined her life had left the rest of the
world - even the little world of Dinwiddie - moving as
serenely, as indifferently, on its way towards eternity. On the
morning of the funeral she had heard the same market
wagons rumble over the cobblestones, the same droning
songs of the hucksters, the same casual procession of feet
on the pavement. A passionate indignation had seized her
because life could be so brutal to death, because the terror
and the pity that flamed in her soul shed no burning light on
the town where her father had worked and loved and
fought and suffered and died. A little later the ceaseless
tread of visitors to the rectory door had

driven this thought from her mind, but through every
minute, while he lay in the closed room downstairs, while
she sat beside her mother in the slow crawling carriage that
went to the old churchyard, while she stood with bowed
head listening to the words of the service - through it all
there had been the feeling that something must happen to
alter a world in which such a thing had been possible, that
life must stop, that the heavens must fall, that God must put
forth His hand and work a miracle in order to show His
compassion and His horror.

But nothing had changed. After the funeral her mother
had come home with her, and the others, many with tear-stained
faces, had drifted in separate ways back to eat
their separate dinners. For a few hours Dinwiddie had
been shaken out of its phlegmatic pursuit of happiness; for
a few hours it had attained an emotional solidarity which
swept it up from the innumerable bypaths of the personal
to a height where the personal rises at last into the
universal. Then the ebb had come; the sense of tragedy
had lessened slowly with the prolongation of feeling; and
the universal vision had dissolved and crystallized into the
pitiless physical needs of the individual. After the funeral a
wave almost of relief had swept over the town at the
thought that the suspension and the strain were at an end.
The business of keeping alive, and the moral compulsion
of keeping abreast of one's neighbours, reasserted their
supremacy even while the carriages, quickening their pace
a trifle on the return drive, rolled out of the churchyard.
Now at the end of a week only Virginia

and her mother would take the time from living to sit
down and remember.

In the adjoining room, which was the nursery, Mrs.
Pendleton was sitting beside the window, with her Bible
open on her knees, and her head bent a little in the
direction of Miss Priscilla, who was mending a black dress
by the table.

"It is so sweet of you, dear Miss Priscilla," she
murmured in her vague and gentle voice as Virginia
entered. So old, so pallid, so fragile she looked, that she
might have been mistaken by a stranger for a woman of
eighty, yet the impossibility of breaking the habit of a
lifetime kept the lines of her face still fixed in an expression
of anxious cheerfulness. For more than forty years she had
not thought of herself, and now that the opportunity had
come for her to do so, she found that she had almost
forgotten the way that one went about it. Even grief could
not make her selfish any more than it could make her
untidy. Her manner, like her dress, was so little a matter of
impulse, and so largely a matter of discipline and of
conscience, that it expressed her broken heart hardly more
than did the widow's cap on her head or the mourning
brooch that fastened the crepe folds of her collar.

"Do you want anything, mother darling? What can I do
for you?" asked Virginia, stooping to kiss her.

"Nothing, dear. I was just telling Miss Priscilla that I had
had a visit from Mr. Treadwell, and that - " her voice
quivered a little - "he showed more feeling than I should
have believed possible. He even wanted to make me an
allowance."

Miss Priscilla drew out her large linen handkerchief,
which was like a man's, and loudly blew her nose.

"I always said there was more in Cyrus than people
thought," she observed. "Here, I've shortened this dress,
Jinny, until it's just about your mother's length."

She tried to speak carelessly, for though she did not
concur in the popular belief that to ignore sorrow is to
assuage it, her social instinct, which was as strongly
developed as Mrs. Pendleton's, encouraged her to throw a
pleasant veil over affliction.

"You're looking pale for want of air, Jinny," she added,
after a minute in which she had thought, "The child has
broken so in the last few days that she looks years older
than Oliver."

"I'm trying to make her go driving," said Mrs.
Pendleton, leaning forward over the open page of her
Bible.

"But I can't go, mother; I haven't the heart for it," replied
Virginia, choking down a sob.

"I don't like to see you looking so badly, dear. You
must keep up your strength for the children's sake, you
know."

"Yes, I know," answered Virginia, but her voice had a
weary sound.

A little later, when Miss Priscilla had gone, and Oliver
came in to urge her to go with him, she shook her head
again, still palely resolute, still softly obstinate.

"But, Jinny, it isn't right for you to let your health go," he
urged. "You haven't had a breath of air for days and you're
getting sallow."

His own colour was as fine as ever; he grew handsomer,
if a trifle stouter, as he grew older; and at thirty-five there
was all the vigour and the charm of twenty in his face and
manner. In one way only he

had altered, and of this alteration, he, as well as Virginia,
was beginning faintly to be aware. Comfort was almost
imperceptibly taking the place of conviction, and the
passionate altruism of youth would yield before many years
to the prudential philosophy of middle-age. Life had
defeated him. His best had been thrown back at him, and
his nature, embittered by failure, was adjusting itself
gradually to a different and a lower standard of values.
Though he could not be successful, it was still possible, even
within the narrow limits of his income and his opportunities,
to be comfortable. And, like other men who have lived day
by day with heroically unselfish women, he had fallen at last
into the habit of thinking that his being comfortable was,
after all, a question of supreme importance to the universe.
Deeply as he had felt the rector's death, he, in common with
the rest of Dinwiddie, was conscious of breathing more
easily after the funeral was over. To his impressionable
nature, alternations of mood were almost an essential of
being, and there was something intolerable to him in any
slowly harrowing grief. To watch Virginia nursing every
memory of her father because she shrank from the subtle
disloyalty of forgetfulness, aroused in him a curious mingling
of sympathy and resentment.

"I wish you'd go, even if you don't feel like it - just to
please me, Virginia," he urged, and after a short struggle
she yielded to his altered tone, and got down her hat from
the shelf of the wardrobe.

A little later, as the dog-cart rolled out of Dinwiddie into
the country road, she looked through her black grenadine
veil on a world which appeared to have lost its brightness.
The road was the one along which she

had ridden on the morning of the fox-hunt; ahead of
them lay the same fields, sown now with the tender green
of the spring; the same creeks ran there, screened by the
same thickets of elder; the same pines wafted their tang on
the March wind that blew, singing, out of the forest. It was
all just as it had been on that morning - and yet what a
difference!

"Put up your veil, Virginia - it's enough to smother you."

But she only shook her head, shrinking farther down
into the shapeless borrowed dress as though she felt that it
protected her. Following the habit of people whose choice
has been instinctive rather than deliberate, a choice of the
blood, not of the brain, they had long ago exhausted the
fund of conversation with which they had started. There was nothing
to talk about - since Virginia had never learned to talk of
herself, and Oliver had grown reticent recently about the subjects
that interested him. When the daily anecdotes of the children had
been aired between them with an effort at breeziness, nothing
remained except the endless discussion of Harry's
education. Even this had worn threadbare of late, and with
the best intentions in the world, Virginia had failed to supply
anything else of sufficient importance to take its place. An
inherited habit, the same habit which had made it possible
for Mrs. Pendleton to efface her broken heart, prompted
her to avoid any allusion to her grief in which she sat
shrouded as in her mourning veil.

"The spring is so early this year," she remarked once,
with her gaze on the rosy billows of an orchard. "The
peach trees have almost finished blooming."

A frown darkened his forehead, and she saw the
muscles about his mouth twitch as though he were irritated.
For all his failure and his bitterness, he did not look a day
older, she thought, than when she had first seen him driving
down High Street in that unforgettable May. He was still as
ardent, still as capable of inspiring first love in the
imagination of a girl. The light and the perfume of that
enchanted spring seemed suddenly to envelop her, and
moved by a yearning to recapture them for an instant, she
drew closer to him, and slipped her hand through his arm.

"Oh, I'm trying my luck with some trash. Nothing but
trash has any chance of going in this damned business."

"You mean it's different from your others? It's less
serious?"

"Less serious? Well, I should say so. It's the sort of ice-cream
soda-water the public wants. But if I can get it put
on, it ought to run, and a play that runs is obliged to make
money. I doubt if there's anything much better than money,
when it comes to that."

"You used to say it didn't matter."

"Did I? Well, I was a fool and I've learned better. These
last few years have taught me that nothing else on earth
matters much."

This was so different from what that other Oliver - the
Oliver of her first love - might have said, that involuntarily
her clasp on his arm tightened. The change in him, so
gradual at first that her mind, unused to subtleties, had
hardly grasped it, was beginning to frighten her.

"You have such burdens, dear," she said, and he noticed
that her voice had acquired the toneless sweetness of her
mother's. "I've tried to be as saving as I could, but the
children have been sick so much that it seems sometimes
as if we should never get out of debt. I am trying now to
pay off the bills I was obliged to make while Harry was ill
in October. If I could only get perfectly strong, we might
let Marthy go, now that Jenny is getting so big."

"You work hard enough as it is, Virginia. You've been
awfully good about it," he answered, but his manner was
almost casual, for he had grown to take for granted her
unselfishness with something of the unconcern with which he
took for granted the comfortable feeling of the spring
weather. In the early days of their marriage, when her fresh
beauty had been a power to rule him, she had taught him to
assume his right to her self-immolation on the altar of his
comfort; and with the taste of bitterness which sometimes
follows the sweets of memory, she recalled that their first
quarrel had arisen because she had insisted on getting out of
bed to make the fires in the morning. Then, partly because the
recollection appeared to reproach him, and partly because,
not possessing the critical faculty, she had never learned to
acknowledge the existence of a flaw in a person she loved,
she edged closer to him, and replied cheerfully:

"I don't mind the work a bit, if only the children will
keep well so we shan't have to spend any more money. I
shan't need any black clothes," she added, with a trembling
lip. "Mrs. Carrington has given me this dress, as she has
gone out of mourning, and I've

He glanced at the shapeless dress, not indignantly as he
would once have done, but with a tinge of quiet
amusement.

"It makes you look every day of forty."

"I know it isn't becoming, but at least it will save having
to buy one."

In spite of the fact that her small economies had made it
possible for them to live wholesomely, and with at least an
appearance of decency, on his meagre salary, they had
always aroused in him a sense of bitter exasperation. He
respected her, of course, for her saving, yet in his heart he
knew that she would probably have charmed him more had
she been a spendthrift - since the little virtues are
sometimes more deadly to the passion of love than are the
large vices. While he nodded, without disputing the sound
common sense in her words, she thought a little wistfully
how nice it would be to have pretty things if only one could
afford them. Someday, when the children's schooling was
over and Oliver had got a larger salary, she would begin to
buy clothes that were becoming rather than durable. But
that was in the future, and, meanwhile, how much better it
was to grudge every penny she spent on herself as long as
there were unpaid bills at the doctor's and the grocer's. All
of which was, of course, perfectly reasonable, and like
other women who have had a narrow experience of life,
she cherished the delusion that a man's love, as well as his
philosophy, is necessarily rooted in reason.

When they turned homeward, the bay mare, pricked by
desire for her stable, began to travel more rapidly,

and the fall of her hoofs, accompanied by the light roll of
the wheels, broke the silence which had almost
imperceptibly settled upon them. Not until the cart drew
up at the gate did Virginia realize that they had hardly
spoken a dozen words on the drive back.

"I feel better already, Oliver," she said, gratefully, as he
helped her to alight. Then hastening ahead of him, she ran
up the walk and into the hall, where her mother, looking
wan and unnatural in her widow's cap, greeted her with the
question:

"Did you have a pleasant drive, dear?"

* * * * * * *

For six months Mrs. Pendleton hid her broken heart
under a smile and went softly about the small daily duties of
the household, facing death, as she had faced life, with a
sublime unselfishness and the manner of a lady. Her hopes,
her joys, her fears even, lay in the past; there was nothing
for her to look forward to, nothing for her to dread in the
future. Life had given her all that it had to offer of bliss or
sorrow, and for the rest of her few years she would be like
one who, having finished her work before the end of the
day, sits waiting patiently for the words of release to be
spoken. As the months went on, she moved like a gentle
shadow about her daughter's little home. So wasted and
pallid was her body that at times Virginia feared to touch
her lest she should melt like a phantom out of her arms. Yet
to the last she never faltered, never cried out for mercy,
never sought to hasten by a breath that end which was to
her as the longing of her eyes, as the brightness of the
sunlight, as the sweetness of the

springtime. Once, looking up from Lucy's lesson which she
was hearing, she said a little wistfully, "I don't think, Jinny,
it will be long now," and then checking herself
reproachfully, she added, "But God knows best. I can trust
Him."

It was the only time that she had ever spoken of the
thought which was in her mind day and night, for when she
could no longer welcome her destiny, she had accepted it.
Her faith, like her opinions, was child-like and
uncritical - the artless product of a simple and incurious
age. The strength in her had gone not into the building of
knowledge, but into the making of character, and she had
judged all thought as innocently as she had judged all
literature, by its contribution to the external sweetness of
living. A child of ten might have demolished her theories,
and yet because of them, or in spite of them, she had
translated into action the end of all reasoning, the
profoundest meaning in all philosophy. But she was born to
decorate instead of to reason. Though her mind had never
winnowed illusions from realities, her hands had patiently
woven both illusions and realities into the embroidered
fabric of Life.

For six months she went about the house and helped
Virginia with the sewing, which had become burdensome
since the children, and especially Harry, were big enough
to wear daily holes in their stockings. Then, when the half
year was over, she took to her bed one evening after she
had carefully undressed, folded her clothes out of sight,
and read a chapter in her Bible. In the morning she did not
get up, and at the end of a fortnight, in which she
apologized for making extra work whenever food was
brought to her, she

clasped her hands on her thin breast, smiled once into
Virginia's face, and died so quietly that there was hardly a
perceptible change in her breathing. She had gone through
life without giving trouble, and she gave none at the end. As
she lay there in her little bed in Virginia's spare room, to
which she had moved after Gabriel's death in order that the
rectory might be got ready for the new rector, she
appeared so shadowy and unearthly that it was impossible
to believe that she had ever been a part of the restless
strivings and the sombre violences of life. On the candle-stand
by her bed lay her spectacles, with steel rims
because she had never felt that she could afford gold ones;
and a single October rose, from which a golden petal had
dropped, stood in a vase beside the Bible. On the foot of
the bed hung her grey flannelette wrapper, with a patch in
one sleeve over which Harry had spilled a bottle of shoe
polish, while through the half-shuttered window the autumn
sunshine fell in long yellow bars over the hemp rugs on the
floor. And she was dead! Her mother was dead - no
matter how much she needed her, she would never come
back. Out of the vacancy around her, some words of her
own, spoken in her girlhood, returned to her. "There is only
one thing I couldn't bear, and that is losing my mother."
Only one thing! And now that one thing had happened, and
she was not only bearing it, she was looking ahead to a
future in which that one thing would be always beside her,
always in her memory. Whatever the years brought to her,
they could never bring her mother again - they could never
bring her a love like her mother's.

and to hold everything, which seemed to exist both within
and outside of herself, a multitude of forgotten images and
impressions flashed into being. She saw the nursery fireside
in the rectory, and her mother, with hair that still shone
like satin, rocking back and forth in the black wicker chair
with the sagging bottom. She saw her kneeling on the old
frayed red and blue drugget, her skirt pinned up at the back
of her waist, while she bathed her daughter's scratched and
aching feet in the oblong tin foot-tub. She saw her, as
beautiful as an angel, in church on Sunday mornings, her
worshipful eyes lifted to the pulpit, an edge of tinted light
falling on the open prayer-book in her hand. She saw her,
thin and stooping, a shadow of all that she had once
been - waiting - waiting - She had always been there. It was
impossible to realize that a time could ever come when she
would not be there - and now she was gone!

And behind all the images, all the impressions, the
stubborn thought persisted that this was life - that one
could never escape it - that whatever happened, one must
come back to it at the last. "I have my children still
left - but for my children I could not live!" she thought,
dropping on her knees by the bedside, and hiding her face
in the grey wrapper.

* * * * * * * *

After this it seemed to her that she ceased to live except
in the lives of her children, and her days passed so evenly,
so monotonously, that she only noticed their flight when
one of the old people in Dinwiddie remarked to her with a
certain surprise: "You've almost a grown

daughter now, Jinny," or "Harry will soon be getting as big
as his father. Have you decided where you will send him to
college?" She was not unhappy - had she ever stopped to
ask herself the question, she would probably have
answered, "If only mother and father were living, I should
be perfectly satisfied"; yet in spite of her assurances, there
existed deep down in her - so deep that her consciousness
had never fully grasped the fact of its presence - a dumb
feeling that something was missing out of life, that the
actuality was a little less bright, a little less perfect than it
had appeared through the rosy glamour of her virgin
dreams. Was this "something missing" merely one of the
necessary conditions of mortal existence? Or was there
somewhere on the earth that stainless happiness which she
had once believed her marriage would bring to her? "I
should be perfectly satisfied if only - " she would sometimes
say in the night, and then check herself before she had
ended the sentence. The lack, real as it was, was still too
formless to lend itself to the precision of words; it belonged
less to circumstances than to the essential structure of life.
And yet, as she put it to herself in her rare moments of
depression, she had so much to be thankful for! The
children grew stronger as they grew older - since Harry's
attack of diphtheria, indeed, there had been no serious
illness in the family, and as she approached middle-age, her
terror of illness increased rather than diminished. The
children made up for much - they ought to have made up
for everything - and yet did they? There was no visible
fault that she could attribute to them. With her
temperamental inability to see flaws, she was accustomed
to think of them as perfect children, as

children whom she would not change, had she the power,
by so much as a hair or an outline. They grew up, straight,
fine, and fearless, full of the new spirit, eager to test life, to
examine facts, possessed by that awakening feeling for
truth which had always frightened her a little in Susan.
Vaguely, without defining the sensation, she felt that they
were growing beyond her, that she could no longer keep up with
them, that, every year, they were leaving her a little farther
behind them. They were fond of her, but she understood from something
Jenny said one day, that they had ceased to be proud of
her. It was while they were looking over an old photograph
album of Susan's that, coming to a picture of Virginia,
taken the week before her wedding, Jenny cried out:
"Why, there's mother!" and slipped it out of the page.

"I never saw that before," Lucy said, leaning over
with a laugh. "You were so young when you married,
mother, and you wore such tight sleeves, and a bustle!"

"Would you ever have believed she was as pretty as
that?" asked Jenny, with the unconscious brutality of
childhood.

"If you are ever as beautiful as your mother was, you
may thank your stars," said Susan dryly, and by the
expression in her face Virginia knew that she was thinking,
"If that was my child, I'd slap her!"

Harry, who had been stuffing fruitcake on the sofa -
sweets were his weakness - rose suddenly and came over
to the group.

"If you are ever as beautiful as she is now, you may
thank you stars, Miss Yellow Frisk!" he remarked
crushingly.

to think of it as among the momentous happenings in
a life - but with that extraordinary proneness of the little to
usurp the significant places of memory, it had become at
last one of the important milestones in her experience. At
the end, when she forgot everything else, she would not
forget Harry's foolish words, nor the look in his indignant
boyish face when he uttered them. Until then she had not
admitted to herself that there was a difference in her feeling
for her children, but with the touch of his sympathetic, not
over clean, hand on her shoulder, she knew that she should
never again think of the three of them as if they were one in
her interest and her love. The girls were good children,
dear children - she would have let herself be cut in pieces
for either of them had it been necessary - but between
Harry and herself there was a different bond: a closer and a
deeper dependency, which strengthened almost
insensibly as he grew older. Her daughters she loved, but
her son, as is the inexplicable way of women, she adored
blindly and without wisdom. If it had been possible to ruin
him, she would have done so, but, unlike many other sons,
he seemed, by virtue of that invincible strength with which
he had been born, to be proof against both spoiling and
flattery. He was a nice boy even to strangers, even to
Susan, with her serene judgment of persons, he appeared a
thoroughly nice boy! He was not only a tall, lean, habitually
towselled-headed youngster, with a handsome sunburned face
and a pair of charming, slightly quizzical blue eyes, but
he was, as his teachers and his school reports bore witness,
possessed of an intellectual brilliancy which made study as
easy, and quite as interesting to him, as play. Unlike

his father, he had entered life endowed with a cheerful
outlook upon the world and with that temperament of
success which usually, but by no means inevitably,
accompanies it. Whatever happened, he would make the
best of it, he would "get on," and it was impossible to
imagine him in any hole so deep that he could not, sooner
or later, find the way out of it. The Pendleton and the
Treadwell spirits had contributed their best to him. If he
derived from Cyrus, or from some obscure strain in Cyrus's
ancestry, a wholesome regard for material success, a robust
determination to achieve results combined with that hard,
clear vision of affairs which makes such achievement easy,
he had inherited from Gabriel his genial temper, his charm
of manner, and his faith in life, which, though it failed to
move mountains, had sweetened and enriched the mere act
of living. Though he was less demonstrative than Lucy, who
had outgrown the plainness and the reticence of her
childhood and was developing into a coquettish, shallow-minded
girl, with what Miss Priscilla called "a glib tongue,"
Virginia learned gradually, in the secret way mothers learn
things, that his love for her was, after his ambition, the
strongest force in his character. Between him and his father
there had existed ever since his babyhood a curious, silent,
yet ineradicable hostility. Whether the fault was Oliver's or
Harry's, whether the father resented the energy and the
initiative of his son, or the son resented the indifference and
the self-absorption of his father, Virginia had never
discovered. For years she fought against admitting the
discord between them. Then, at last, on the occasion of a
quarrel, when it was no longer possible to dissemble,
she followed Oliver into his study,

which had once been the "back parlour," and pleaded with
him to show a little patience, a little sympathy with his son.
"He's a boy any father would be proud of - " she finished,
almost in tears.

"I know he is," he answered irritably, "but the truth is he
rubs me the wrong way. I suppose the trouble is that you
have spoiled him."

"But he isn't spoiled. Everybody says - "

"Oh, everybody!" he murmured disdainfully, with a
shrug of his fine shoulders.

He looked back at her with the sombre fire of anger still
in his eyes, and she saw, without trying to see, without
even knowing that she did see, all the changes that years
had wrought in his appearance. Physically, he was a finer
animal than he had been when she married him, for time,
which had sapped her youth and faded her too delicate
bloom, had but added a deeper colour to the warm brown
of his skin, a steadier glow to his eyes, a more silvery gloss
to his hair. At forty, he was a handsomer man than he had
been at twenty-five, yet, in spite of this, some virtue had
gone out of him - here, too, as in life, "something was
missing." The generous impulses, the high heart for
adventure, the enthusiasm of youth, and youth's white rage
for perfection - where were these? It was as if a rough
hand had passed over him, coarsening here, blotting out
there, accentuating elsewhere. The slow, insidious devil of
compromise had done its work. Once he had made one of
the small band of fighters who fight not for advantage, but
for the truth; now he stood in that middle place with the
safe majority who are "neither for God nor for His
enemies." Life had done this to him - life and Virginia. It
was not only that he had "grown soft,"

as he would have expressed it, nor was it even wholly that
he had grown selfish, for the canker which ate at the roots
of his personality had affected not his character merely, but
the very force of his will. Though the imperative he obeyed
had always been not "I must," but "I want," his natural
loftiness of purpose might have saved him from the results
of his weakness had he not lost gradually the capacity for
successful resistance with which he had started. If only in the
beginning she had upheld not his inclinations, but his convictions;
if only she had sought not to soothe his weakness, but to
stimulate his strength; if only she had seen for once the thing as
it was, not as it ought to have been -

He was buried in his work now, and there were months
during this year when she appeared hardly to see him, so
engrossed, so self-absorbed had he become. Sometimes
she would remember, stifling the pang it caused, the nights
when he had written his first plays in Matoaca City, and
that he had made her sit beside him with her sewing
because he could not think if she were out of the room.
Now, he could write only when he was alone; he hated an
interruption so much that she often let the fire go out rather
than open his closed door to see if it was burning. If she
went in to speak to him, he laid his pen down and did not
take it up again while she was there. Yet this change had
come so stealthily that it had hardly affected her happiness.
She had grown accustomed to the difference before she
had realized it sufficiently to surer. Sometimes she would
say to herself a little wonderingly, "Oliver used to be so
romantic;" for with the majority of women whose marriages
have surrendered to an invasion of the

commonplace, she accepted the comfortable theory that
the alteration was due less to circumstances than to the
natural drying of the springs of sentiment in her husband's
character. Occasionally, she would remember with a smile
her three days' jealousy of Abby; but the brevity and the
folly of this had established her the more securely in her
impregnable position of unquestioning belief in him. She had
started life believing, as the women of her race had
believed for ages before her, that love was a divine gift
which came but once in a lifetime, and which, coming once,
remained forever indestructible. People, of course, grew
more practical and less intense as they left youth farther
behind them; and though this misty principle would have
dissolved at once had she applied it to herself (for she
became more sentimental as she approached middle-age),
behind any suspicious haziness of generalization there
remained always the sacred formula, "Men are different."
Once, when a sharp outbreak of the primal force had
precipitated a scandal in the home of one of her
neighbours, she had remarked to Susan that she was
"devoutly thankful that Oliver did not have that side
to his nature."

"It must be a disagreeable side to live with," Susan,
happily married to John Henry, and blissfully expectant of
motherhood, had replied, "but as far as I know, Oliver
never had a light fancy for a woman in his life - not even
before he was married. I used to tell him that it was
because he expected too much. Physical beauty by itself
never seemed to attract him - it was the angel in you that
he first fell in love with."

A glow of pleasure flushed Virginia's sharpened
features, mounting to the thin little curls on her forehead.

These little curls, to which she sentimentally clung in
spite of the changes in the fashions, were a cause of
ceaseless worry to Lucy, who had developed into a
"stylish" girl, and would have died sooner than she would
have rejected the universal pompadour of the period. It
was the single vanity that Virginia had ever permitted
herself, this adhering at middle-age to the quaint and rather
coquettish hairdressing of her girlhood: and Fate had
punished her by threading the little curls with grey, while
Susan's stiff roll (she had adopted the newer mode)
remained bravely flaxen. But Susan was one of those
women who, lacking a fine fair skin and defying tradition,
are physically at their best between forty and fifty.

"Oliver used to be so romantic," said Virginia, as she had
said so often to herself, while the glow paled slowly from
her cheeks, leaving them the colour of faded rose-leaves.

"Not so romantic as you were, Jinny."

"Oh, I am still," she laughed softly. "Lucy says I take
more interest in her lovers now than she does," and she
added after a minute, "Girls are so different to-day from
what they used to be - they are so much less sentimental."

"But I thought Lucy was. She has enough flirtations for
her age, hasn't she?"

"She has enough attention, of course - for the funny part
is that, though she's only sixteen and not nearly so pretty as
Jenny, the men are all crazy, as Miss Willy says, about her.
But, somehow, it's different. Lucy enjoys it, but it isn't her
life. As for Jenny, she's still too young to have taken shape,
I suppose, but she has only one idea in her

"That's queer, because she promises already to be the
most beautiful girl in Dinwiddie."

"She is beautiful. I am quite sure that it isn't because she
is my daughter that I think so. But, all the same, I'm afraid
she'll never be as popular as Lucy is. She is so distant and
overbearing to men that they are shy of her."

"And you'll let her go to college?"

"If we can afford it - and now that Oliver hopes to get
one of his plays put on, we may have a little more money.
But it seems such a waste to me. I never saw that it could
possibly do a woman any good to go to college - though
of course I always sympathized with your disappointment,
dear Susan. Jenny is bent on it now, but I feel so strongly
that it would be better for her to come out in Dinwiddie
and go to parties and have attention."

"And does Oliver feel that, too?"

"Oh, he doesn't care. Jenny is his favourite, and he will
let her do anything he thinks she has set her heart on. But
he has never put his whole life into the children's as I have
done."

"But if she goes, will you be able to send Harry?"

"Of course, Harry's education must come before
everything else - even Oliver realizes that. Do you know,
I've hardly bought a match for ten years that I haven't
stopped to ask myself if it would take anything from
Harry's education. That's why I've gone as shabby as this
almost ever since he was born - that and my longing to
give the girls a few pretty things."

remember. I should think you would wear your clothes out
making them over."

The look in Virginia's face showed that the recollection
Susan had invoked was not entirely a pleasant one.

"I've done with as little as I could," she answered. "Only
once was I really extravagant, and that was when I bought
a light blue silk which I didn't have made up until years
afterwards when it was dyed black. Dyed things never
hold their own," she concluded pensively.

"You are too unselfish - that is your only fault,"
said Susan impulsively. "I hope they appreciate all you have
been to them."

"Oh, they appreciate me," returned Virginia with a laugh.
"Harry does, anyhow."

"I believe Harry is your darling, Jinny."

"I try not to make any difference in my feeling - they
are all the best children that ever lived - but - Susan,
I wouldn't breathe this to anybody on earth but you - I can't
help thinking that Harry loves me more than the others do.
He - he has so much more patience with me. The girls
sometimes laugh at me because I am old-fashioned and
behind the times, and I can see that it annoys them
because I am ignorant of things which they seem to have
been born knowing."

"But it was for their sake that you let yourself go - you
gave up everything else for them from the minute that they
were born."

A tear shone in Virginia's eye, and Susan knew, without
having it put into words, that a wound somewhere in that
gentle heart was still hurting. "I'd like to slap them!" she
thought fiercely, and then she said aloud with a manner of
cheerful conviction:

"You are a great deal too good for them, Jinny, and
some day they will know it."

A longing came over her to take the thin little figure in
her arms and shake back into her something of the sparkle
and the radiance of her girlhood. Why did beauty fade?
Why did youth grow middle-aged? Above all, why did
love and sacrifice so often work their own
punishment?

CHAPTER II
THE PRICE OF COMFORT
VIRGINIA knelt on the cushioned seat in the baywindow
of her bedroom, gazing expectantly down on the pavement
below. It was her forty-fifth birthday, and she was
impatiently waiting for Harry, who was coming home for a
few days before going abroad to finish his studies at
Oxford. The house was a new, impeccably modern
dwelling, produced by a triumph of the utilititarian genius of
the first decade of the twentieth century, and Oliver had
bought it at a prodigious price a few years after his
dramatic success had lifted him from poverty into comfort.
The girls, charmed to have made the momentous passage
into Sycamore Street, were delighted with the space and
elegance of their new home, but Virginia had always felt
somehow as if she were visiting. The drawing-room, and
especially the butler's pantry, awed her. She had not dared
to wash those august shelves with soda, nor to fasten her
favourite strips of white oilcloth along their shining surfaces.
The old joy of "fixing up" her storeroom had been wrested
from her by the supercilious mulatto butler, who wore
immaculate shirt fronts, but whom she suspected of being
untidy beneath his magnificent exterior. Once when she had
discovered a bucket of apple-parings tucked away under
the sink, where it had stood for days, he had
Page 411

given "notice" so unexpectedly and so haughtily that she
had been afraid ever since to look under dish-towels or
into hidden places while he was absent. Out of the problem
of the South "the servant question" had arisen to torment
and intimidate the housekeepers of Dinwiddie; and inferior
service at high wages was regarded of late as a thing for
which one had come to be thankful. Had they still lived in
the little house, Virginia would gladly have done her work
for the sake of the peace and the cleanliness which it would
have ensured; but since the change in their circumstances,
Oliver and the girls had grown so dependent upon the
small luxuries of living that she put up with anything - even
with the appalling suspicion that every mouthful she ate was
not clean - rather than take the risk of having her three
servants desert in a body. When she had unwisely
complained to Oliver, he had remarked impatiently that he
couldn't be bothered about the housekeeping, and Lucy
had openly accused her of being "fussy."

After this she had said nothing more, but gathering
suddenly all her energies, she had precipitated a scene with
the servants (which ended to her relief in the departure of
the magnificent butler) and had reorganized at a stroke the
affairs of her household. For all her gentleness, she was not
incapable of decisive action, and though it had always been
easier for her to work herself than to direct others, her
native talent for domesticity had enabled her to emerge
triumphantly out of this crisis. Now, on her forty-fifth
birthday, she could reflect with pride (the pride of a
woman who has mastered her traditional métier de
femme) that there was not a house in Dinwiddie which had
better food or

smoother service than she provided in hers. For more and
more, as Oliver absorbed himself in his work, which kept
him in New York many months of the year, and the children
grew so big that they no longer needed her, did her life
centre around the small monotonous details of cooking and
cleaning. Only when, as occasionally happened, the rest of
the family were absent together, Oliver about his plays, Lucy
on a visit to Richmond, and Harry and Jenny at college, an
awful sense of futility descended upon her, and she felt that
both the purpose and the initiative were sapped from her
character. Sometimes, during such days or weeks of loneliness,
she would think of her mother's words, uttered so
often in the old years at the rectory: "There isn't any pleasure
in making things unless there's somebody to make them for."

Beyond the window, the November day, which had
been one of placid contentment for her, was slowly
drawing to its close. The pale red line of an autumn sunset
lingered in the west above the huddled roofs of the town,
while the mournful dusk of evening was creeping up from
the earth. A few chilled and silent sparrows hopped
dejectedly along the bared boughs of the young maple tree
in front of the house, and every now and then a brisk
pedestrian would pass on the concrete pavement below.
Inside, a cheerful fire burned in the grate, and near it, on
one end of the chintz-covered couch, lay Oliver's present
to her - a set of black bear furs, which he had brought
down with him from New York. Turning away from the
window, she slipped the neck-piece over her shoulders,
and as she did so, she tried to stifle the wonder whether he
would have bought them - whether even he would

have remembered the date - if Harry had not been with
him. Last year he had forgotten her birthday - and never
before had he given her so costly a present as this. They
were beautiful furs, but even she, with her ignorance of the
subtler arts of dress, saw that they were too heavy for her,
that they made her look shrunken and small and
accentuated the pallor of her skin, which had the colour
and the texture of withered rose-leaves. "They are just
what Jenny has always wanted, and they would be so
becoming to her. I wonder if Oliver would mind my letting
her take them back to Bryn Mawr after the holidays?"

If Oliver would mind! The phrase still remained after the
spirit which sanctified it had long departed. In her heart she
knew - though her happiness rested upon her passionate
evasion of the knowledge - that Oliver had not only
ceased to mind, that he had even ceased to notice whether
she wore his gifts or gave them to Jenny.

A light step flitted along the hall; her door opened
without shutting again, and Lucy, in a street gown made in
the princess style, hurried across the room and turned a
slender back appealingly towards her.

"Oh, mother, please unhook me as fast as you can. The
Peytons are going to take me in their car over to
Richmond, and I've only a half hour in which to get ready."

Then, as Virginia's hands fumbled a little at an obstinate
hook, Lucy gave an impatient pull of her shoulders, and
reached back, straining her arms, until she tore the
offending fastenings from her dress. She was a small,
graceful girl, not particularly pretty, not particularly clever,
but possessing some indefinable

quality which served her as successfully as either beauty or
cleverness could have done. Though she was the most
selfish and the least considerate of the three children,
Virginia was like wax in her hands, and regarded her
dashing, rather cynical, worldliness with naïve and
uncomprehending respect. She secretly disapproved of
Lucy, but it was a disapproval which was tempered by
admiration. It seemed miraculous to her that any girl of
twenty-two should possess so clearly formulated and
critical a philosophy of life, or should be so utterly
emancipated from the last shackles of reverence. As far as
her mother could discern, Lucy respected but a single thing,
and that single thing was her own opinion. For authority she
had as little reverence as a savage; yet she was not a
savage, for she represented instead the perfect product of
over-civilization. The world was bounded for her by her
own personality. She was supremely interested in what she
thought, felt, or imagined, and beyond the limits of her
individuality, she was frankly bored by existence. The joys,
sorrows, or experiences of others failed even to arrest her
attention. Yet the very simplicity and sincerity of her egoism
robbed it of offensiveness, and raised it from a trait of
character to the dignity of a point of view. The established
law of self-sacrifice which had guided her mother's life was
not only personally distasteful to her - it was morally
indefensible. She was engaged not in illustrating precepts of
conduct, but in realizing her independence; and this
realization of herself appeared to her as the supreme and
peculiar obligation of her being. Though she was less fine
than Jenny, who in her studious way was a girl of much
character, she was by no means as superficial as she

appeared, and might in time, aided by fortuitous
circumstances, make a strong and capable woman. Her
faults, after all, were due in a large measure to a training
which had consistently magnified in her mind the space
which she would ultimately occupy in the universe.

And she had charm. Without beauty, without intellect,
without culture, she was still able to dominate her
surroundings by her inexplicable but undeniable charm. She
was one of those women of whom people say, "It is
impossible to tell what attracts men in a woman." She was
indifferent, she was casual, she was even cruel; yet every
male creature she met fell a victim before her. Her slightest
gesture had a fascination for the masculine mind; her silliest
words a significance. "I declare men are the biggest fools
where women are concerned," Miss Priscilla had
remarked, watching her; and the words had adequately
expressed the opinion of the feminine half of Dinwiddie's
population.

From sixteen to twenty-two she had remained as
indifferent as a star to the impassioned moths flitting around
her. Then, a month after her twenty-second birthday, she
had coolly announced her engagement to a man whom she
had seen but six times - a widower at that, twelve years
older than herself, and the father of two children. The blow
had fallen, without warning, upon Virginia, who had never
seen the man, and did not like what she had heard of him.
Unwisely, she had attempted to remonstrate, and had been
met by the reply, "Mother, dear, you must allow me to
decide what is for my happiness," and a manner which said,
"After all, you know so much less of life than I do, how
can you advise me?"

It was intolerable, of course, and the worst of it was
that, rebel as she might against the admission, Virginia
could not plausibly deny the truth of either the remark or
the manner. On the face of it, Lucy must know best what
she wanted, and as for knowledge of life, she was certainly
justified in considering her mother a child beside her.
Oliver, when the case was put before him, showed a
sympathy with Virginia's point of view and a moral inability
to coerce his daughter into accepting it. "She knows I
never liked Craven," he said, "but after all what are we
going to do about it? She's old enough to decide for
herself, and you can't in this century put a girl on bread and
water because she marries as she chooses."

Nothing about-duty! nothing about consideration for her
family! nothing about the awful responsibility of entering
lightly into such sacred relations! Lucy was evidently in
love - if she hadn't been, why on earth should she have
precipitated herself into an affair whose only reason was a
lack of reason that was conclusive? - but she might have
been engaging a chauffeur for all the solemnity she put into
the arrangements. She had selected her clothes and
planned her wedding with a practical wisdom which had
awed and saddened her mother. All the wistful sentiments,
the tender evasions, the consecrated dreams that had gone
into the preparations for Virginia's marriage, were buried
somewhere under the fragrant past of the eighties - and
the memory of them made her feel not forty-five, but a
hundred. Yet the thing that troubled her most was a feeling
that she was in the power of forces which she did not
understand - a sense that there were profound
disturbances beneath the familiar surface of life.

When Lucy had gone out, with her dress open down the
back and a glimpse of her smooth girlish shoulders showing
between the fastenings, Virginia went over to the window
again, and was rewarded by the sight of Harry's athletic
figure crossing the street.

In a minute he came in, kissing her with the careless
tenderness which was one of her secret joys.

"Halloo! little mother! All alone? Where are the others?"
He was the only one of her children who appeared to
enjoy her, and sometimes when they were alone together,
he would turn and put his arms about her, or stroke her
hands with an impulsive, protecting sympathy. There were
moments when it seemed to her that he pitied her because
the world had moved on without her; and others when he
came to her for counsel about things of which she was not
only ignorant, but even a little afraid. Once he had
consulted her as to whether he should go on the football
team at his college, and had listened respectfully enough to
her timid objections. Respect, indeed, was the quality in
which he had never failed her, and this, even more than his
affection, had become a balm to her in recent years, when
Lucy and Jenny occasionally lost patience and showed
themselves openly amused by her old-fashioned opinions.
She had never forgotten that he had once taken her part
when the girls had tried to persuade her to brush back the
little curls from her temples and wear her hair in a
pompadour.

"It would look so much more suitable for a woman of
your age, mother dear," Lucy had remarked sweetly with a
condescending deference which had made Virginia feel as
if she were a thousand.

your hair is turning grey," Jenny had added, with an
intention to be kind and helpful which had gone wrong
somehow and turned into officiousness.

"Shut up, and don't be silly geese," Harry had growled
at them, and his rudeness in her behalf had given Virginia a
delicious thrill, which was increased by the knowledge that
his manners were usually excellent even to his sisters. "You
let them fuss all they want to, mother," he concluded, "but
your hair is a long sight better than theirs, and don't you let
them nag you into making a mess of it."

All of which had been sweet beyond words to Virginia,
though she was obliged to admit that his judgment was
founded upon a deplorable lack of discrimination in the
matter of hairdressing - since Lucy and Jenny both had
magnificent hair, while her own had long since lost its gloss
and grown thin from neglect. But if it had been really the
truth, it could not have been half so sweet to her.

"Lucy is dressing to motor over to Richmond with the
Peytons, and your father went out to ride. Harry, why
won't you let me go on to New York to see you off?"

He was sailing the following week for England, and he
had forbidden her to come to his boat, or even to New
York, for a last glimpse of him.

"Oh, I hate having a scene at the boat, mother. It
always makes me feel creepy to say good-bye. I never do
it if I can help."

"I know you don't, darling - you sneaked off after the
holidays without telling me what train you were going-by.
But this is for such a long time. Two years, Harry."

Her voice broke, and turning away, she gazed through
the window at the young maple tree as though her very
soul were concentrated upon the leafless boughs.

He stirred uneasily, for like most men of twenty-one, he
had a horror of sentiment.

"Oh, well, you may come over next summer, you know.
I'll speak to father about it. If his play goes over to
London, he'll have to be there, won't he?"

"I suppose so," she replied, choking down her tears,
and becoming suddenly cheerful. "And you'll write to me
once a week, Harry?"

"You bet! By the way, I've had nothing to eat since ten
o'clock, and I feel rather gone. Have you some cake
around anywhere?"

"But we'll have supper in half an hour, and I've ordered
waffles and fried chicken for you. Hadn't you better wait?"

Her cheerfulness was not assumed now, for with the turn
to practical matters, she felt suddenly that the universe had
righted itself. Even Harry's departure was forgotten in the
immediate necessity of providing for his appetite.

"Well, I'll wait, but I hope you've prepared for an army.
I could eat a hundred waffles."

He snapped his jaws, and she laughed delightedly. For
all his twenty-one years, and the scholarship which he had
won so easily and which was taking him abroad, he was as
boyish and as natural as he had been at ten. Even his love
of sweets had not lessened with the increase of his dignity.
To think of his demanding cake the minute after he had
entered the house!

still steering carefully away from the reefs of emotion. "I
suppose you read all about it in the papers?"

She shook her head, smiling. Though she tried her best
to be as natural and as unemotional as he was, she could
not keep her adoration out of her eyes, which feasted on
him like the eyes of one who had starved for months. How
handsome he was, with his broad shoulders, his fine
sunburned face, and his frank, boyish smile. It was a pity he
had to wear glasses - yet even his glasses seemed to her
individual and charming. She couldn't imagine a single way
in which he could be improved, and all the while she was
perfectly sure that it wasn't in the least because she was his
mother - that she wasn't a bit prejudiced in her judgment.
It appeared out of the question that anybody - even a
Stranger - could have found fault with him. "No, I haven't
had time to read the papers - I've been so busy getting
ready for Lucy's wedding," she answered. "But your father
told me about it. It must be splendid - only I wish he
wouldn't speak so contemptuously of it," she added
regretfully. "He says it's trash, and yet I'm sure everybody
spoke well of it, and they say it is obliged to make a great
deal of money. I can't understand why his success seems to
irritate rather than please him."

"Well, he thinks, you know, that it is only since he's
cheapened himself that he has had any hearing."

"Cheapened himself?" she repeated wistfully. "But his
first plays failed entirely, so these last ones must be a great
deal better if they are such splendid successes."

"Well, I suppose it's hard for us to understand his point
of view. We talked about it one night in New

York when we were dining with Margaret Oldcastle - she
takes the leading part in 'Pretty Fanny,' you know."

"Yes, I know. What is she like?"

A strange, still look came into her face, as though she
waited with suspended breath for his answer.

"She's a charmer on the stage. I heard father tell her that
she made the play, and I'm not sure that he wasn't right."

"But you saw her off the stage, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes, she asked me to dinner. She didn't look
nearly so young, then, and she's not exactly pretty; but,
somehow, it didn't seem to matter. She's got genius - you
couldn't be with her ten minutes without finding out that. I
never saw any one in my life so much alive. When she's in a
room, even if she doesn't speak, you can't keep your eyes
off her. She's like a bright flame that you can't stop looking
at - not even if there are a lot of prettier women there,
too."

"Is she dark or fair?"

He stopped to think for a moment.

"To save my life I can't remember - but I think she's
dark - at least, her eyes are, though her hair may be light.
But you never think of her appearance when she's talking. I
believe she's the best talker I ever heard - better even than
father."

His enthusiasm had got the better of him, and it was
evident that Oliver's success had banished for a time at
least the secret hostility which had existed between father
and son. That passion for material results, which could not
be separated from the Treadwell spirit without robbing that
spirit of its vitality, had gradually altered the family attitude
toward Oliver's

profession. Art, like business, must justify itself by its
results, and to a commercial age there could be no
justifiable results that could not bear translation into figures.
Success was the chief end of man, and success could be
measured only in terms of money.

"There's your father's step," said Virginia, whose face
looked drawn and pallid in the dusk. "Let me light the
lamp, darling. He hates to read his paper by anything but
lamplight."

But he had jumped up before she had finished and was
hunting for matches in the old place under the clock on the
mantelpiece. She was such a little, thin, frail creature that
he laughed as she tried to help him.

"So Lucy is going to marry that old rotter, is she?" he
asked pleasantly as his father entered. "Well, father! I was
just asking mother why she let Lucy marry that old rotter?"

"But the dear child has set her heart on him, and he is
really very nice to us," replied Virginia hurriedly. Though
she was disappointed in Lucy's choice, it seemed dreadful
to her to speak of a man who was about to enter the family
as a "rotter."

"It's quite gone, dear. Doctor Powell gave me some
aspirin and it cured it." She smiled gratefully at him, with a
touching pleasure in the fact that he had remembered to
ask. As she glanced quickly from father to son, eager to
see them reconciled, utterly forgetful of herself, something
of the anxious cheerfulness of Mrs. Pendleton's spirit
appeared to live again in her look. Though her freshness
had withered, she was still what

is called "a sweet looking woman," and her expression of
simple goodness lent an appealing charm to her features.

"Are you going back to New York soon, father?" asked
Harry, turning politely in Oliver's direction. From his
manner, which had lost its boyishness, Virginia knew that
he was trying with all his energy to be agreeable, yet that he
could not overcome the old feeling of constraint and lack of
sympathy.

"Next week. 'The Home' is to be put on in February,
and I'm obliged to be there for the rehearsals."

"Does Miss Oldcastle take the leading part?"

"Yes."

Crossing the room, Oliver held out his hands to the fire,
and then turning, stretched his arms, with a stifled yawn,
above his head. The only fault that could be urged against
his appearance was that his figure was becoming a trifle
square, that he was beginning to look a little too well-fed, a
little too comfortable. For the rest, his hair, which had gone
quite grey, brought out the glow and richness of his colour
and lent a striking emphasis to his dark, shining eyes.

"Do you think that the new play is as good as 'Pretty
Fanny'?" asked Virginia.

"Well, they're both rot, you know," he answered, with a
laugh.

"Oh, Oliver, how can you, when all the papers spoke
so admiringly of it?"

"Why shouldn't they? It is perfectly innocuous. The kind
of thing any father might take his daughter to see. We
shan't dispute that, anyhow."

painful enough to have him speak so slightingly of his
success, but worse than this was the feeling it aroused in
her that he was defying authority. Even if her innate respect
for the printed word had not made her accept as final the
judgment of the newspapers, there was still the
incontestable fact that so many people had paid to see
"Pretty Fanny" that both Oliver and Miss Oldcastle had
reaped a small fortune. She glanced in a helpless way at
Harry, and he said suddenly:

"Don't you think Jenny ought to come home to be with
mother after Lucy marries? You are obliged to go to New
York so often that she will get lonely."

"It's a good idea," agreed Oliver amiably, "but there's
another case where you'll have to use greater authority than
mine. When I stopped reforming people," he added gaily,
"I began with my own family."

"The dear child would come in a minute if I suggested it,"
said Virginia, "but she enjoys her life at college so much
that I wouldn't have her give it up for anything in the world.
It would make me miserable to think that any of my
children made a sacrifice for me."

"You needn't worry. We've trained them differently,"
said Oliver, and though his tone was slightly satirical, the
satire was directed at himself, not at his wife.

"I am sure it is what I should never want," insisted
Virginia, almost passionately, while she rose in response to
the announcement of supper, and met Lucy, in trailing pink
chiffon, on the threshold.

"Are you sure your coat is warm enough, dear?" she
asked. "Wouldn't you like to wear my furs? They are
heavier than yours."

Raising herself on tiptoe, Lucy kissed Harry, and then
ran to the mirror, eager to see if the black fur looked well
on her.

"They're just lovely on me, mother. I feel gorgeous!" she
exclaimed triumphantly, and indeed her charming girlish
face rose like a white flower out of the rich dark furs.

In Virginia's eyes, as she turned back in the doorway to
watch her, there was a radiant self-forgetfulness which
illumined her features. For a moment she lived so
completely in her daughter's youth that her body seemed to
take warmth and colour from the emotion which
transfigured her.

"I am so glad, darling," she said. "It gives me more
pleasure to see you in them than it does to wear them
myself." And though she did not know it, she embodied her
gentle philosophy of life in that single sentence.

CHAPTER III
MIDDLE-AGE
JENNY had promised to come home a week before
Lucy's wedding, but at the last moment, while they waited
supper for her, a telegram announced with serious brevity
that she was "detained." Twenty-four hours later a second
telegram informed them that she would not arrive until the
evening before the marriage, and at six o'clock on that
day, Virginia, who had been packing Lucy's trunks ever
since breakfast, looked out of the window at the sound of
the door-bell, and saw the cab which had contained her
second daughter standing beside the curbstone.

"Mother, have you the change to pay the driver?" asked
a vision of stern loveliness floating into the room. With the
winter's glow in her cheeks and eyes and the bronze sheen
on her splendid hair, which was brushed in rippling waves
from her forehead and coiled in a severely simple knot on
her neck, she might have been a wandering goddess, who
had descended, with immortal calm, to direct the affairs of
the household. Her white shirtwaist, with its starched
severity, suited her austere beauty and her look of almost
superhuman composure.

"Take off your hat, darling, and lie down on the couch
while I finish Lucy's packing," said Virginia, when she had
sent the servant downstairs to pay the

cabman. Her soul was in her eyes while she watched Jenny
remove her plain felt hat, with its bit of blue scarf around
the crown - a piece of millinery which presented a
deceptive appearance of inexpensiveness - and pass the
comb through the shining arch of her hair.

"I am so sorry, mother dear, I couldn't come before, but
there were some important lectures I really couldn't afford
to miss. I am specializing in biology, you know."

Her manner, calm, sweet, and gently condescending,
was such as she might have used to a child whom she loved
and with whom she possessed an infinite patience. One felt
that while talking, she groped almost unconsciously for the
simplest and shortest words in which her meaning might be
conveyed. She did not lie down as Virginia had suggested,
but straightening her short skirt, seated herself in an upright
chair by the table and crossed her slender feet in their
sensible, square-toed shoes. While she gazed at her,
Virginia remembered, with a smile, that Harry had once
said his sister was as flawless as a geometrical figure, and
he couldn't look at her without wanting to twist her nose out
of shape. In spite of her beauty, she was not attractive to
men, whom she awed and intimidated by a candid
assumption of superiority. For Lucy's conscienceless
treatment of the male she had unmitigated contempt. Her
sister, indeed, had she not been her sister, would have
appeared to her as an object for frank
condemnation - "one of those women who waste
themselves in foolish flirtations." As it was, loving Lucy, and
being a loyal soul, with very scientific ideas of her own
responsibility for her sister as well as for that abstract
creature whom she classified as "the working woman,"
she thought of Lucy tenderly as a

"dear girl, but simple." Her mother, of course, was, also,
"simple"; but, then, what could one expect of a woman
whose only education had been at the Dinwiddie Academy
for Young Ladies? To Jenny, education had usurped the
place which the church had always occupied in the
benighted mind of her mother. All the evils of our
civilization - and these evils shared with the working
woman the first right to her attention - she attributed to the
fact that the former generations of women had had either
no education at all, or worse even than that, had had the
meretricious brand of education which was supplied by an
army of Miss Priscillas. For Miss Priscilla herself, entirely
apart from the Academy, which she described frankly, to
Virginia's horror, as "a menace," she entertained a sincere
devotion, and this ability to detach her judgments from her
affections made her appear almost miraculously wise to her
mother, who had been born a Pendleton.

"No, I'm not tired. Is there anything I can help you
about, mother?" she asked, for she was a good child and
very helpful - the only drawback to her assistance being
that when she helped she invariably commanded.

"Oh, no, darling, I'll be through presently - just as soon
as I get this trunk packed. Lucy's things are lovely. I wish
you had come in time to see them. Miss Willy and I spent
all yesterday running blue ribbons in her underclothes, and
though we began before breakfast, we had to sit up until
twelve o'clock so as to get through in time to begin on the
trunks this morning."

enjoyed describing all Lucy's clothes, for she loved pretty
things, though she never bought them for her self, finding it
impossible to break the habit of more than twenty years of
economy; but Jenny, who was proud of her sincerity,
looked so plainly bored that she checked her flowing
descriptions.

"I hope you brought something beautiful to wear tomorrow,
Jenny?" she ventured timidly, after a silence.

"Of course I had to get a new dress, as I'm to be maid
of honour, but it seemed so extravagant, for I had two
perfectly good white chiffons already."

"But it would have hurt Lucy, dear, if you hadn't worn
something new. She even wanted me to order my dress
from New York, but I was so afraid of wounding poor
little Miss Willy - she has made my clothes ever since I
could remember - that I persuaded the child to let her
make it. Of course, it won't be stylish, but nobody will look
at me anyway."

"I hope it is coloured, mother. You wear black too
much. The psychological effect is not good for you."

With her knees on the floor and her back bent over the
trunk into which she was packing a dozen pairs of slippers
wrapped in tissue paper, Virginia turned her head and
stared in bewilderment at her daughter, whose classic
profile showed like marble flushed with rose in the
lamplight.

"But at my time of life, dear? Why, I'm in my forty-sixth
year."

"But forty-six is still young, mother. That was one of the
greatest mistakes women used to make - to imagine that
they must be old as soon as men ceased to make love to
them. It was all due to the idea that men

admired only schoolgirls and that as soon as a woman
stopped being admired she had stopped living."

"But they didn't stop living really. They merely stopped
fixing up."

"Oh, of course. They spent the rest of their lives in the
storeroom or the kitchen slaving for the comfort of the men
they could no longer amuse."

This so aptly described Virginia's own situation that her
interest in Lucy's trousseau faded abruptly, while a wave of
heartsickness swept over her. It was as if the sharp and
searching light of truth had fallen suddenly upon all the frail
and lovely presences by which she had helped herself to
live and to be happy. A terror of the preternatural insight of
youth made her turn her face away from Jenny's too critical
eyes.

"But what else could they do, Jenny? They believed that
it was right to step back and make room for the young,"
she said, with a pitiful attempt at justification of her
exploded virtues.

"Oh, mother!" exclaimed Jenny still sweetly, "whoever
heard of a man of that generation stepping back to make
room for anybody?"

"But men are different, darling. One doesn't expect
them to give up like women."

"Oh, mother!" - this time the sweetness had borrowed
an edge of irony. It was Science annihilating tradition, and
the tougher the tradition, the keener the blade which
Science must apply.

"I can't help it, dear, it is the way I was taught. My
darling mother felt like that" - a tear glistened in her eye -
"and I am too old to change my way of thinking."

her chair, Jenny put her arms about her and kissed her
tenderly. "You can't help being old-fashioned, I know. You
are not to blame for your ideas; it is Miss Priscilla." Her
voice grew stern with condemnation as she uttered the
name. "But don't you think you might try to see things a
little more rationally? It is for your own sake I am speaking.
Why should you make yourself old by dressing as if you
were eighty simply because your grandmother did so?"

She was right, of course, for the trouble with Science is
not its blindness, but its serene infallibility. As useless to
reject her conclusions as to deny the laws and the principles
of mathematics! After all manner of denials, the laws and
the principles would still remain. Virginia, who had never
argued in her life, did not attempt to do so with her own
daughter. She merely accepted the truth of Jenny's inflexible
logic; and with that obstinate softness which is an
inalienable quality of tradition, went on believing precisely
what she had believed before. To have made them think
alike, it would have been necessary to melt up the two
generations and pour them into one - a task as hopeless as
an endeavour to blend the Dinwiddie Young Ladies'
Academy with a modern college. Jenny's clearly formulated
and rather loud morality was unintelligible to her mother,
whose conception of duty was that she should efface
herself and make things comfortable for those around her.
The obligation to think independently was as
incomprehensible to Virginia as was that wider altruism
which had swept Jenny's sympathies beyond the home into
the factory and beyond the factory into the world where
there were "evils." Her own instinct had always

been the true instinct of the lady to avoid "evil," not to
seek it, to avoid it, honestly if possible, and, if not
honestly - well, to avoid it at any cost. The love of truth for
truth's sake was one of the last of the virtues to descend
from philosophy into a working theory of life, and it had
been practically unknown to Virginia until Jenny had
returned, at the end of her first year, from college. To be
sure, Oliver used to talk like that long ago, but it was so
long ago that she had almost forgotten it.

"You are very clever, dear - much too clever for me,"
she said, rising from her knees. "I wonder if Lucy has
anything else she wants to go into this trunk? It might be
packed a little tighter."

In response to her call, the door opened and Lucy
entered breathlessly, with her hair, which she had washed
and not entirely dried, hanging over her shoulders.

"What is it, mother? Oh, Jenny, you have come! I'm so
glad!"

The sisters kissed delightedly. In spite of their lack of
sympathy, they were very fond of each other.

"Do you want to put anything else in this trunk before I
lock it, Lucy?"

"Could you find room for my blue flannel bath robe? I'll
want it on top where I can get it out without unpacking,
and, oh, mother, won't you please put my alcohol stove
and curling irons in my travelling bag?"

She was prettily excited, and during the last few days
she had shown an almost child-like confidence in her
mother's opinions about the trivial matters of packing.

"Mother, I don't want to come down yet - my hair isn't
dry. Will you send supper up to me? I'll dress about nine
o'clock when Bertie and the girls are coming."

"Of course I will, darling. I'll go straight downstairs and
fix your tray. Is there anything you can think of that you
would like?"

At this Jenny broke into a laugh: "Why, anybody would
think she was dying instead of being married!"

"Just a cup of coffee. I really couldn't swallow a morsel,"
replied Lucy, whose single manifestation of sentiment had
been a complete loss of appetite. "You needn't laugh,
Jenny. Wait until you are going to be married, and see if
you are able to eat anything."

Putting the tray back into the trunk, Virginia closed it
almost caressingly. For twenty-four hours, as Lucy's
wedding began to draw nearer, she had been haunted by
the feeling that she was losing her favourite child, and
though her reason told her that this was not true - that
Lucy was, in fact, less fond of her than either of the others,
and far less dear to her heart than Harry - still she was
unable wholly to banish the impression. It seemed only
yesterday that she had sat waiting, month after month,
week after week, day after day, for her to be born. Only
yesterday that she had held her, a baby, in her arms, and
now she was packing the clothes which that baby would
carry away when she went off with her husband!
Something of the hushed expectancy of those long months
of approaching motherhood enveloped her again with the
thought of Lucy's wedding to-morrow.

After all, Lucy was her first child - neither of the others had
been awaited with quite the same brooding ecstasy, with
quite the same radiant dreams. To neither of the others had
she given herself at the hour of birth with such an
abandonment of her soul and body. And she had been a
good child - all day with a lump in her throat Virginia had
assured herself again and again that no child could have
been better. A hundred little charming ways, a hundred
bright delicious tricks of expression and of voice, followed
her from room to room, as though Lucy had indeed, as
Jenny said, been dying upstairs instead of waiting to be
married. And all the time, while she arranged the supper
tray and attended to the making of the coffee so that it
might be perfect, she was thinking, "Mother must have felt
like this when I was married and I never knew it, I never
suspected." She saw her little bedroom at the rectory, with
her own figure, in the floating tulle veil, reflected in the
mirror, and her mother's face, that face from which all
remembrance of self seemed to have vanished, looking at
her over the bride's bouquet of white roses. If only she had
told her then that she understood! If only she had ever
really understood until to-night! If only it was not too late to
turn back now and gather that plaintive figure, waiting with
the white roses, into her arms!

The next morning she was up at daybreak, finishing the
packing, preparing the house before leaving for church,
making the final arrangements for the wedding breakfast.
When at last Lucy, with reddened eyes and tightly curled
hair, appeared in the pantry while her mother was helping
to wash a belated supply of glass and china which had
arrived

from the caterer's, Virginia felt that the parting was worse
even than Harry's going to college.

"Mother, I've the greatest mind on earth not to do it."

"My pet, what is the matter?"

"I can't imagine why I ever thought I wanted to marry! I
don't want to do it a bit. I don't want to go away and leave
you and father. And, mother, I really don't believe that I
love him!"

It was so like Lucy after months of cool determination,
of perfect assurance, of stubborn resistance to
opposition - it was so exactly like her to break down when
it was too late and to begin to question whether she really
wanted her own way after she had won it. And it was so
like Virginia that at the first sign of weakness in her child
she should grow suddenly strong and efficient.

"My darling, it is only nervousness. You will be better as
soon as you begin to dress. Come upstairs and I will fix
you a dose of aromatic ammonia."

"Do you really think it's too late to stop it?"

"Not if you feel you are going to regret it, but you must
be very sure that it isn't merely a mood, Lucy."

At the first sign that the step was not yet irrevocable, the
girl's courage returned.

"Well, I suppose I'll have to get married now," she said,
"but if I don't like it, I'm not going to live with him."

"Not live with your husband! Why, Lucy!"

"It's perfectly absurd to think I'll have to live with a man
if I find I don't love him. Ask Jenny if it isn't."

Ask Jenny! This was her incredible suggestion! This was
her reverence for authority, for duty, for the thundering
admonitions of Saint Paul! As far as Saint Paul was
concerned, he might as well have been the ponderous
anecdotal minister in the brick Presbyterian church around
the corner.

"But Jenny is so - so" murmured Virginia, and stopped
because words failed her. Had Jenny been born in any
family except her own, she would probably have described
her as "dangerous," but it was impossible to brand her
daughter with so opprobrious an epithet. The word, owing
to the metaphorical yet specific definition of it which she
had derived from the rector's sermons in her childhood,
invariably suggested fire and brimstone to her imagination.

"Well, I'm not going to do it unless I want to," returned
Lucy positively. "And you may look as shocked as you
please, mother, but you needn't pretend that you wouldn't
be glad to see me."

The difference between the two girls, as far as Virginia
could see, was that Jenny really believed her awful ideas
were right, and Lucy merely believed that they might help
her the more effectively to follow her wishes.

"Of course I'd be glad to see you, but, Lucy, it pains me
so to hear you speak flippantly of your marriage. It is the
most sacred day in your life, and you treat it as lightly as if
it were a picnic."

"Do I? Poor little day, have I hurt its feelings?"

They were on the way upstairs, following a procession
of wedding presents which had just arrived by express,
and glancing round over the heads of

the servants, she made a laughing face at her mother.
Clearly, she was incorrigible, and her passing fear, which
had evidently been entirely due, as Virginia had suspected,
to one of her rare attacks of nervousness, had entirely
disappeared. In her normal mood she was perfectly
capable of taking care of herself not only within the estate
of matrimony, but in an African jungle. She would in either
situation inevitably get what she wanted, and in order to get
it she would shrink as little from sacrificing a husband as
from enslaving a savage.

And yet a few hours later, when she stood beneath her
bridal veil and gazed at her image in the cheval-glass in her
bedroom, she presented so enchanting a picture of virgin
innocence, that Virginia could hardly believe that she
harboured in her breast, under the sacred white satin of her
bride's gown, the heretical opinions which she had uttered
downstairs in the pantry. Her charming face had attuned its
expression so perfectly to the dramatic values of the
moment that she appeared, in the words of that sentimental
soul, Miss Priscilla, to be listening already to "The Voice
that Breathed o'er Eden."

"Doesn't mother look sweet?" she asked, catching sight
of Virginia's face in the mirror. "I love her in pale
grey - only she ought to have some flowers."

"I told father to order her a bunch of violets," answered
Jenny. "I wonder if he remembered to do it."

A look of pleasure, the first she had worn for days,
flitted over Virginia's face. She had all her mother's
touching appreciation of insignificant favours, and, perhaps
because her pleasure was so excessive, people

shrank a little from arousing it. Like most persons who
thought perpetually of others, she was not accustomed to
being thought of very often in return.

But Oliver had remembered, and when the purple box
was brought up to her, and Jenny pinned the violets on her
dress, a blush mantled her thin cheeks, and she looked for a
moment almost as young and lovely as her daughters. Then
Oliver came after Lucy, and gathering up her train, the girl
smiled at her mother and hurried out of the room. At the last
minute her qualms appeared suddenly to depart. Whatever
happened in the months and years that came afterwards,
she had determined to get all she could out of the
excitement of the wedding. She had cast no loving glance
about the little room, where she was leaving her girlhood
behind her; but Virginia, lingering for an instant after the
others had gone out, looked with tear-dimmed eyes at the
small white bed and the white furniture decorated in roses.
She suffered in that minute with an intensity and a depth of
feeling that Lucy had never known in the past - that she
would never know in the future - for it is given to mothers
to live not once, but twice or thrice or as many times as they
have children to live for. And the sunlight, entering through
the high window, fell very gently on the anxious love in her
eyes, on the fading white rose-leaves of her cheeks, and on
the silvery mist of curls framing her forehead.

* * * * * * *

That afternoon, when Lucy had motored off with her
husband, and Oliver and Jenny had gone riding

together, Virginia went back again into the room and put
away the scattered clothes the girl had left. On the bed was
the little pillow, with the embroidered slip over a cover of
pink satin Virginia had made, and taking it from the bed she
put it into one of the boxes which had been left open until
the last minute. As she did so, it was as if a miraculous
wand was waved over her memory, softening Lucy's image
until she appeared to her in all the angelic sweetness and
charm of her childhood. Her egoism, her selfishness, her
lack of consideration and of reverence, all those faults of an
excessive individualism embodied in the girl, vanished so
completely that she even forgot they had ever existed.
Once again she felt in her breast the burning rapture of
young motherhood; once again she gathered her first-born
child - hers alone, hers out of the whole world of
children! - into her arms. A choking sensation rose in her
throat, and, dropping a handful of photographs which she
had started to put away, she hurried from the room, as
though she were leaving something dead there that she
loved.

Downstairs, the caterers and the florists were in
possession, carting away glass and china, dismantling
decorations, and ejecting palms as summarily as though
they had come uninvited. The servants were busy sweeping
floors and moving chairs and sofas back into place, and in
the kitchen the negro cook was placidly beginning
preparations for supper. For a time Virginia occupied
herself returning the ornaments to the drawing-room
mantelpiece, and the illustrated gift books to the centre
table. When this was over she looked about her with the nervous

expectancy of a person who has been overwhelmed for
months by a multitude of exigent cares, and realized, with a
start, that there was nothing for her to do. To-morrow
Oliver and Jenny were both going away - he to New York
to attend the rehearsals of his play, and she back to finish
her year at college - and Virginia would be left in an empty
house with all her pressing practical duties suddenly ended.

"You will have such a nice long rest now, mother dear,"
Lucy had said as she clung to her before stepping into the
car, and Virginia had agreed unthinkingly that a rest for a
little while would, perhaps, do her good. Now, turning
away from the centre table, where she had laid the last
useless volume in place, she walked slowly through the
library to the dining-room, and then from the dining-room
into the pantry. Here, the dishes were all washed, the
cup-towels were drying in an orderly row beside the sink, and
the two maids and the butler were "drawing a breath" in
wooden chairs by the stove.

On being assured that there was enough for a week, she
gave a few directions about the distribution of the other
food left from the wedding breakfast, and then went out
again and into Oliver's study. A feeling of restlessness
more acute than any she had ever known kept her walking
back and forth between the door and the window, which
looked out into a square of garden, where a few lonely
sticks protruded out of the discoloured snow on the grass.
She had lived

for others so long that she had at last lost the power of
living for herself.

There was nothing to do to-day; there would be nothing
to do to-morrow; and, unless Jenny came home to be
married, there would be nothing to do next year or the
years after that. While Oliver was in Dinwiddie, she had, of
course, the pleasure of supplying his food and of watching
him eat it; but beyond that, even when he sat in the room
with her, there was little conversation between them. She
herself loved to talk, for she had inherited her mother's
ability to keep up a honeyed flow of sound about little
things; but she had learned long ago that there were times
when her voice, rippling on about nothing, only irritated
him, and with her feminine genius for adaptability, she had
made a habit of silence. He never spoke to her of his work
except in terms of flippant ridicule which pained her, and
the supreme topic of the children's school reports had been
absent now for many years. Companionship of a mental
sort had always been lacking between them, yet so
reverently did she still accept the traditional fictions of
marriage, that she would have been astonished at the
suggestion that a love which could survive the shocks of
tragedy might at last fade away from a gradual decline of
interest. Nothing had happened. There had been no scenes,
no quarrels, no jealousies, no recriminations - merely a
gentle, yet deliberate, withdrawal of personalities. He had
worshipped her at twenty-two, and now, at forty-seven,
there were moments when she realized with a stab of pain
that she bored him; but beyond this she had felt no cause
for unhappiness, and until the last year no cause

even for apprehension. The libertine had always been
absent from his nature; and during all the years of their
marriage he had, as Susan put it, hardly so much as looked
at another woman. Whatever came between them, it would
not be physical passion, but a far subtler thing.

Going to his desk, she took up a photograph of
Margaret Oldcastle and studied it for a moment - not
harshly, not critically, but with a pensive questioning. It was
hardly a beautiful face, but in its glowing intellectuality, it
was the face of a woman of power. So different was the
look of noble reticence it wore from that of the
conventional type of American actress, that while she
gazed at it Virginia found herself asking vaguely, "I wonder
why she went on the stage?" The woman was not a pretty
doll - she was not a voluptuous enchantress - the coquetry
of the one and the flesh of the other were missing. If the
stories Virginia had heard of her were to be trusted, she
had come out of poverty not by the easy steps of
managers' favours, but by hard work, self-denial, and
discipline. Though Virginia had never seen her, she felt
instinctively that she was an "honest woman."

And yet why did this face, which had in it none of the
charms of the seductress, disturb her so profoundly? She
was too little given to introspection, too accustomed to
think always in concrete images, to answer the question;
but her intuition, rather than her thought, made her
understand dimly that the things she feared in Margaret
Oldcastle were the qualities in which she herself was
lacking. Whatever power the woman possessed drew
its strength

and its completeness from a source which Virginia had
never recognized as being necessary or even beneficent to
love. After all, was it not petty and unjust in her to be hurt
by Oliver's friendship for a woman who had been of such
tremendous assistance to him in his work? Had he not said
a hundred times that she had succeeded in making his plays
popular without making them at the same time ridiculous?

Putting the photograph back in its place on the desk, she
turned away and began walking again over the strip of
carpet which led from the door to the window. In the yard
the dried stalks of last year's flowers looked so lonely in
the midst of the dirty snow, that she felt a sudden impulse
of sympathy. Poor things, they had outlived their
usefulness. The phrase occurred to her again, and she
remembered how often her father had applied it to women
whose children had all married and left them.

"Poor Matilda! She is restless and dissatisfied, and she
doesn't understand that it is because she has outlived her
usefulness." At that time "poor Matilda" had seemed to her
an old woman - but, perhaps, she wasn't in reality much
over forty. How soon women grew old a generation ago!
Why, she felt as young to-day as she did the morning on
which she was married. She felt as young, and yet her hair
was greying, her face was wrinkled, and, like poor
Matilda, she had outlived her usefulness. While she stood
there that peculiar sensation which comes to women when
their youth is over - the sensation of a changed
world - took possession of her. She felt that life was
slipping, slipping past her, and that she was left behind like
a bit of the sentiment or the

law of the last century. Though she still felt young, it
was not with the youth of to-day. She had no part in the
present; her ideals were the ideals of another period; even
her children had outgrown her. She saw now with a piercing
flash of insight, so penetrating, so impersonal, that it seemed
the result of some outside vision rather than of her own
uncritical judgment, that life had treated her as it treats those
who give, but never demand. She had made the way too
easy for others; she had never exacted of them; she had
never held them to the austerity of their ideals. Then the
illumination faded as if it had been the malicious act of a
demon, and she reproached herself for allowing such
thoughts to enter her mind for an instant.

"I don't know what can be the matter with me. I never
used to brood. I wonder if it can be my time of life that
makes me so nervous and apprehensive?"

For so long she had waited for some definite point of
time, for the children to begin school, for them to finish
school, for Harry to go off to college, for Lucy to be
married, that now, when she realized that there was nothing
to expect, nothing to prepare for, her whole nature, with all
the multitudinous fibres which had held her being together,
seemed suddenly to relax from its tension. To be sure,
Oliver would come home for a time at least after his
rehearsals were over, Jenny would return for as much of
the holidays as her philanthropic duties permitted, and, if
she waited long enough, Harry would occasionally pay her
a visit. They all loved her; not one of them, she told herself,
would intentionally neglect her -

The next afternoon, when Oliver and Jenny had driven
off to the station, she put on her street clothes, and went
out to call on Susan, who lived in a new house in High
Street. Mrs. Treadwell, having worn out everybody's
patience except Susan's, had died some five years before,
and the incorrigible sentimentalists of Dinwiddie - there
were many of them - expressed publicly the belief that
Cyrus had never been "the same man since his wife's
death." As a matter of fact, Cyrus, who had retired from
active finance in the same year that he lost Belinda, had
missed his business considerably more than he had missed
his wife, whose loss, if he had ever analyzed it, would have
resolved itself into the absence of somebody to bully. But
on the very day that he had retired from work he had
begun to age rapidly, and now, standing on Susan's porch,
he suggested to Virginia an orange from which every drop
of juice had been squeezed. Of late he had taken to giving
rather lavishly to churches, with a vague, superstitious
hope, perhaps, that he might buy the salvation he had been
too busy to work out in other ways. And so acute had
become his terror of death, Virginia had heard, that after
every attack of dyspepsia he dispatched a check to the
missionary society of the church he attended.

Upstairs, in her bedroom, Susan, who had just come in,
was "taking off her things," and she greeted Virginia with a
delight which seemed, in some strange way, to be both a
balm and a stimulant. One thing, at least, in her life had not
altered with middle-age,

and that was Susan's devotion. She was a large, young,
superbly vigorous woman of forty-five, with an abundant
energy which overflowed outside of her household in a
dozen different directions. She loved John Henry, but she
did not love him to the exclusion of other people; she loved
her children, but they did not absorb her. There was hardly
a charity or a public movement in Dinwiddie in which she
did not take a practical interest. She had kept her mind as
alert as her body, and the number of books she read had
always shocked Virginia a little, who felt that time for
reading was obliged to be time subtracted from more
important duties.

"I've thought of you so much, Jinny, darling. You mustn't
let yourself begin to feel lonely."

Virginia shook her head with a smile, but in spite of her
effort not to appear depressed, there was a touching
wistfulness in her eyes.

"Of course I miss the dear children, but I'm so thankful
that they are happy."

"I wish Jenny would come back home to stay with you."

"She would if I asked her, Susan" - her face showed
her pleasure at the thought of Jenny's willingness for the
sacrifice - "but I wouldn't have her do it for the world.
She's so different from Lucy, who was quite happy as long
as she could have attention and go to parties. Of course, it
seems to me more natural for a girl to be like that,
especially a Southern girl, but Jenny says that she is obliged
to have something to think about besides men. I wonder
what my dear father would have thought of her?"

"She'll take you by surprise some day, and marry as
suddenly as Lucy did."

"That's what Oliver says, but Miss Priscilla is sure she'll
be an old maid, because she's so fastidious. It's funny how
much more women exact of men now than they used to.
Don't you remember what a heroine the women of Miss
Priscilla's generation thought Mrs. Tom Peachey was
because she supported Major Peachey by taking boarders
while he just drank himself into his grave? Well, somebody
mentioned that to Jenny the other day and she said it was
'disgusting.' "

"I always thought so," said Susan, "but, Jinny, I'm more
interested in you than I am in Mrs. Peachey. What are you
going to do with yourself?" Almost unconsciously both had
eliminated Oliver as the dominant figure in Virginia's future.

"I don't know, dear. I wish my children were as young
as yours. Bessie is just six, isn't she?"

"You ought to have had a dozen children. Didn't you
realize that Nature intended you to do it?"

"I know" - a pensive look came into her face - "but we
were very poor, and after the three came so quickly, and
the little one that I lost, Oliver felt that we could not afford
to have any others. I've so often thought that I was never
really happy except when I had a baby in my arms."

"It's a devilish trick of Nature's that she makes them stop
coming at the very time that you want them most. Forty-five
is not much more than half a lifetime, Jinny."

"And when one has lived in their children as I have
done, of course, one feels a little bit lost without

Her voice broke, and Susan, leaning forward
impulsively, put her arms about her.

"Jinny, darling, I never saw you depressed before."

"I was never like this until to-day. It must be the
weather - or my age. I suppose I shall get over it."

"Of course you will get over it - but you mustn't let it
grow on you. You mustn't be too much alone."

"How can I help it? Oliver will be away almost all
winter, and when he is at home, he is so absorbed in his
work that he sometimes doesn't speak for days. Of course,
it isn't his fault," she added hastily; "it is the only way he can
write."

"And you're alone now for the first time for twenty-five
years. That's why you feel it so keenly."

The look of unselfish goodness which made Virginia's
face almost beautiful at times passed like an edge of light
across her eyes and mouth. "Don't worry about me, Susan.
I'll get used to it."

"You will, dear, but it isn't right. I wish Harry could have
stayed in Dinwiddie. He would have been such a comfort
to you."

"But I wouldn't have had him do it! The boy is so
brilliant. He has a future before him. Already he has had
several articles accepted by the magazines" - her face
shone - "and I hope that he will some day be as successful
as Oliver has been without going through the long struggle."

"Can't you go to England to see him in the summer?"

"That's what I want to do." It was touching to see how
her animation and interest revived when

she began talking of Harry. "And when Oliver's play is put
on in February, he has promised to take me to New York
for the first night."

"I am glad of that. But, meanwhile, you mustn't sit at
home and think too much, Jinny. It isn't good for you.
Can't you find an interest? If you would only take up
reading again. You used to be fond of it."

"I know, but one gets out of the habit. I gave it up after
the children came, when there was so much that was really
important for me to do, and now, to save my life, I can't
get interested in a book except for an hour or two at a
time. I'm always stopping to ask myself if I'm not neglecting
something, just as I used to do while the children were
little. You see, I'm not a clever woman like you. I was
made just to be a wife and mother, and nothing else."

"But you're obliged to be something else now. You are
only forty-five. There may be forty more years ahead of
you, and you can't go on being a mother every minute of
your time. Even if you have grandchildren, they won't be
like your own. You can't slave over them in the way you
used to do over yours. The girls' husbands and Harry's
wife would have something to say about it."

"Do you know, Susan, I try not to be little and jealous,
but when you said 'Harry's wife' so carelessly just now it
brought a lump to my throat."

"He will marry some day, darling, and you might as well
accustom yourself to the thought."

"I know, and I want him to do it. I shall love his wife as
if she were my daughter - but - but it seems to me at this
minute as if I could not bear it!"

The grey twilight, entering through the high window
above her head, enveloped her as tenderly as if it were the
atmosphere of those romantic early eighties to which she
belonged. The small aristocratic head, with its quaint
old-fashioned clusters of curls on the temples, the delicate
stooping figure, a little bent in the chest, the whole pensive,
exquisite personality which expressed itself in that manner
of gentle self-effacement - these things spoke to Susan's
heart, through the softness of the dusk, with all the touching
appeal of the past. It was as if the inscrutable enigma of
time waited there, shrouded in mystery, for a solution which
would make clear the meaning of the blighted promises of
life. She saw herself and Virginia on that May afternoon
twenty-five years ago, standing with eager hearts on the
edge of the future; she saw them waiting, with breathless,
expectant lips, for the miracle that must happen! Well, the
miracle had happened, and like the majority of miracles, it
had descended in the act of occurrence from the zone of
the miraculous into the region of the ordinary. This was life,
and looking back from middle-age, she felt no impulse to
regret the rapturous certainties of youth. Experience, though
it contained an inevitable pang, was better than ignorance.
It was good to have been young; it was good to be middle-aged;
and it would be good to be old. For she was one of
those who loved life, not because it was beautiful, but
because it was life.

"I must go," said Virginia, rising in the aimless way of a
person who is not moving toward a definite object.

"Stay and have supper with us, Jinny. John Henry will
take you home afterward."

"I can't, dear. The - the servants are expecting me."

She kissed Susan on the cheek, and taking up her little
black silk bag, turned to the door.

"Jinny, if I come by for you to-morrow, will you go with
me to a board meeting or two? Couldn't you possibly take
an interest in some charity?" It was a desperate move, but
at the moment she could think of no other to make.

"Oh, I am interested, Susan - but I have no executive
ability, you know. And - and, then, poor dear father used
to have such a horror of women who were always running
about to meetings. He would never even let mother do
church work - except, of course, when there was a cake
sale or a fair of the missionary society."

Susan's last effort had failed, and as she followed
Virginia downstairs and to the front door, a look almost of
gloom settled on her large cheerful face.

"Try to pay some calls every afternoon, won't you,
dear?" she said at the door. "I'll come in to see you in the
morning when we get back from marketing."

Then she added softly, "If you are ever lonesome and
want me, telephone for me day or night. There's nothing on
earth I wouldn't do for you, Jinny."

Virginia's eyes were wonderful with love and gratitude
as they shone on her through the twilight. "We've been
friends since we were two years old, Susan, and, do you
know, there is nobody in the world that I would ask
anything of as soon as I would of you."

A look of unutterable understanding and fidelity
passed between them; then turning silently away, Virginia
descended the steps and walked quickly along the path to
the pavement, while Susan, after watching her through the
gate, shut the door and went upstairs to the nursery.

The town lay under a thin crust of snow, which was
beginning to melt in the chill rain that was falling. Raising her
umbrella, Virginia picked her way carefully over the icy
streets, and Miss Priscilla, who was looking in search of
diversion out of her front window, had a sudden palpitation
of the heart because it seemed to her for a minute that
"Lucy Pendleton had returned to life." So one generation of
gentle shades after another had moved in the winter's dusk
under the frosted lamps of High Street.

Through the windows of her house a cheerful light
streamed out upon the piles of melting snow in the yard,
and at the door one of her coloured servants met her with
the news that a telegram was on the hall table. Before
opening it she knew what it was, for Oliver's
correspondence with her had taken this form for more than
a year.

"Arrived safely. Very busy. Call on John Henry if you
need anything."

She put it down and turned hastily to letters from Harry
and Jenny. The first was only a scrawl in pencil, written
with that boyish reticence which always overcame Harry
when he wrote to one of his family; but beneath the stilted
phrases she could read his homesickness and his longing
for her in every line.

and caressed the paper as tenderly as if it had been
the letter of a lover. He had written to her every Sunday
since he had first gone off to college and several times she
knew that he had denied himself a pleasure in order to send
her her weekly letter. Already, she had begun to trust to his
"sense of responsibility" as she had never, even in the early
days of her marriage, trusted to Oliver's.

Opening the large square envelope which was addressed
in Jenny's impressive handwriting, she found four closely
written pages entertainingly descriptive of the girl's journey
back to college and of the urgent interests she found
awaiting her there. In this letter there was none of the
weakness of implied sentiment, there was none of the
plaintive homesickness she had read in Harry's. Jenny
wrote regularly and affectionately because she felt that it
was her duty to do so, for, unlike Lucy, who was heard
from only when she wanted something, she was a girl who
obeyed sedulously the promptings of her conscience. But if
she loved her mother, she was plainly not interested in her.
Her attitude towards life was masculine rather than
feminine; and Virginia had long since learned that in the
case of a man it is easier to inspire love than it is to hold his
attention. Harry was different, of course - there was a
feminine, or at least a poetic, streak in him which endowed
him with that natural talent for the affections which is
supposed to be womanly - but Jenny resembled Oliver in
her preference for the active rather than for the passive side
of experience.

Going upstairs, Virginia took off her hat and coat, and,
without changing her dress, came down again

with a piece of fancy-work in her hands. Placing herself
under the lamp in Oliver's study, she took a few careful
stitches in the centrepiece she was embroidering for Lucy,
and then letting her needle fall, sat gazing into the wood-fire
which crackled softly on the brass andirons. From the lamp
on the desk an amber glow fell on the dull red of the
leather-covered furniture, on the pale brown of the walls, on the
rich blending of oriental colours in the rug at her feet. It was
the most comfortable room in the house, and for that reason
she had fallen into the habit of using it when Oliver was
away. Then, too, his personality had impressed itself so
ineffaceably upon the surroundings which he had chosen
and amid which he had worked, that she felt nearer to him
while she sat in his favourite chair, breathing the scent of the
wood-fire he loved.

She thought of the "dear children," of how pleased she
was that they were all well and happy, of how "sweet"
Harry and Jenny were about writing to her; and so
unaccustomed was she to thinking in the first person, that
not until she took up her embroidery again and applied her
needle to the centre of a flower, did she find herself saying
aloud: "I must send for Miss Willy to-morrow and engage
her for next week. That will be something to do."

And looking ahead she saw days of endless stitching and
basting, of endless gossip accompanied by the cheerful
whirring of the little dressmaker's machine. "I used to pity
Miss Willy because she was obliged to work," she thought
with surprise, "but now I almost envy her. I wonder if it is
work that keeps her so young and brisk? She's never had anything in

her life, and yet she is so much happier than some people
who have had everything."

The maid came to announce supper, and, gathering up
her fancy-work, Virginia laid it beside the lamp on the end
of Oliver's writing table. As she did so, she saw that her
photograph, taken the year of her marriage, which he
usually carried on his journeys, had been laid aside and
overlooked when he was packing his papers. It was the first
time he had forgotten it, and a little chill struck her heart as
she put it back in its place beside the bronze letter rack.
Then the chill sharpened suddenly until it became an icy
blade in her breast, for she saw that the picture of Margaret
Oldcastle was gone from its frame.

CHAPTER IV
LIFE'S CRUELTIES
THERE was a hard snowstorm on the day Oliver
returned to Dinwiddie, and Virginia, who had watched
from the window all the afternoon, saw him crossing the
street through a whirl of feathery flakes. The wind drove
violently against him, but he appeared almost unconscious
of it, so buoyant, so full of physical energy was his walk.
Never had he looked more desirable to her, never more
lovable, than he did at that instant. Something, either a trick
of imagination or an illusion produced by the flying
whiteness of the storm, gave him back for a moment the
glowing eyes and the eager lips of his youth. Then, as she
turned towards the door, awaiting his step on the stairs, the
mirror over the mantel showed her her own face, with its
fallen lines, its soft pallor, its look of fading sweetness. She
had laid her youth down on the altar of her love, while he
had used love, as he had used life, merely to feed the flame
of the unconquerable egoism which burned like genius
within him.

He came in, brushing a few flakes of snow from his
sleeve, and it seemed to her that the casual kindness of his
kiss fell like ice on her cheek as he greeted her. It was
almost three months since he had seen her, for he had been
unable to come home for Christmas, but from his manner
he might have parted from her only yesterday.

He was kind - he had never been kinder - but she
would have preferred that he should strike her.

"Are you all right?" he asked gently, turning to warm his
hands at the fire. "Beastly cold, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, I am all right, dear. The play is a great
success, isn't it?"

His face clouded. "As such things go. It's awful rot, but
it's made a hit - there's no doubt of that."

"And the other one, 'The Home' - when is the first night
of that?"

"Next week. On Thursday. I must get back for it."

"And I am to go with you, am I not? I have looked
forward to it all winter."

At the sound of her anxious question, a contraction of
pain, the look of one who has been touched on the raw,
crossed his face. Though she was not penetrating enough
to discern it, there were times when his pity for her
amounted almost to a passion, and at such moments he
was conscious of a blind anger against Life, as against
some implacable personal force, because it had robbed
him of the hard and narrow morality on which his ancestors
leaned. The scourge of a creed which had kept even Cyrus
walking humbly in the straight and flinty road of Calvinism,
appeared to him in such rare instants as one of the spiritual
luxuries which a rationalistic age had destroyed; for it is not
granted to man to look into the heart of another, and so he
was ignorant alike of the sanctities and the passions of
Cyrus's soul. What he felt was merely that the breaking of
the iron bonds of the old faith had weakened his powers of
resistance as inevitably as it had liberated his thought. The
sound of his own rebellion was in his ears, and filled with
the noise of it, he had not stopped to reflect that

the rebellion of his ancestors had seemed less loud
only because it was inarticulate. Was it really that his
generation had lost the capacity for endurance, the
spiritual grace of self-denial, or was it simply that it
had lost its reticence and its secrecy with the passing of its
inflexible dogmas?

"Why, certainly you must go if you would care to," he
answered.

"Perhaps Jenny will come over from Bryn Mawr to join
us. The dear child was so disappointed that she couldn't
come home for Christmas."

"If I'd known in time that she wasn't coming, I'd have
found a way of getting down just for dinner with you. I
hope you weren't alone, Virginia."

"Oh, no, Miss Priscilla came to spend the day with me.
You know she used to take dinner with us every Christmas
at the rectory."

A troubled look clouded his face. "Jenny ought to have
been here," he said, and asked suddenly, as if it were a
relief to him to change the subject: "Have you had news of
Harry?"

The light which the name of Harry always brought to her
eyes shone there now, enriching their faded beauty. "He
writes to me every week. You know he hasn't missed a
single Sunday letter since he first went off to school. He is
wild about Oxford, but I think he gets a little homesick
sometimes, though of course he'd never say so."

"He'll do well, that boy. The stuff is in him."

"I'm sure he's a genius if there ever was one, Oliver.
Only yesterday Professor Trimble was telling me that Harry
was far and away the most brilliant pupil he had ever
had."

"Well, he's something to be proud of. And now what
about Lucy? Is she still satisfied with Craven?"

"She never writes about anything else except about her
house. Her marriage seems to have turned out beautifully.
You remember I wrote you that she was perfectly
delighted with her stepchildren, and she really appears to
be as happy as the day is long."

"You never can tell. I thought she'd be back again
before two months were up."

"I know. We all prophesied dreadful things - even
Susan."

"That reminds me - I came down on the train with John
Henry, and he said that Uncle Cyrus was breaking
rapidly."

"He has never been the same since his wife's death,"
replied Virginia, who was a victim of this sentimental
fallacy. "It's strange - isn't it? - because we used
to think they got on so badly."

"I wonder if it is really that? Well, is there any other
news? Has anything else happened?"

With his back to the fire, he stood looking down on her
with kindly, questioning eyes. He had done his best; from
the moment when he had entered the room and met the
touching brightness in her face, he had struggled to be as
natural, to be as affectionate even, as she desired. At the
moment, so softened, so self-reproachful was his mood, he
would willingly have cut off his arm for her could the
sacrifice in any manner have secured her happiness. But
there were times when it seemed easier to give his life for
her than to live it with her; when to shed his blood would
have cost less than to make conversation. He yearned over

Virginia, but he could not talk to her. Some impregnable
barrier of personality separated them as if it were a wall.
Already they belonged to different generations; they spoke
in the language of different periods. At forty-seven, that
second youth, the Indian summer of the emotions, which
lingers like autumnal sunshine in the lives of most men
and of a few women, was again enkindling his heart. And
with this return of youth, he felt the awakening of infinite
possibilities of feeling, of the ancient ineradicable belief
that happiness lies in possession. Love, which had used up her
spirit and body in its service, had left him untouched by its
exactions. While she, having fulfilled her nature, was content to
live anew not in herself, but in her children, the force of
personal desire was sweeping over him again, with all the flame and
splendour of adolescence. The "something missing" waited
there, just a little beyond, as he had seen it waiting in that
enchanted May when he fell in love with Virginia. And
between him and his vision of happiness there interposed
merely his undisciplined conscience, his variable, though
honest, desire to do the thing that was right. Duty, which had
controlled Virginia's every step, was as remote and aloof
from his life as was the creed of his fathers. Like his age, he
was adrift among disestablished beliefs, among floating
wrecks of what had once been rules of conduct by which
men had lived. And the widening responsibilities, the
deepening consciousness of a force for good greater than
creed or rules, all the awakening moral strength which
would lend balance and power to his age, these things had
been weakened in his character by the indomitable egoism
which had ordered his life. There was nothing for him to fall
back upon,

Sitting there in the firelight, with her loving eyes following
his movements, she told him, bit by bit, all the latest gossip
of Dinwiddie. Susan's eldest girl had developed a beautiful
voice and was beginning to take lessons; poor Miss
Priscilla had had a bad fall in Old Street while she was on
the way to market, and at first they feared she had broken
her hip, but it turned out that she was only dreadfully
bruised; Major Peachey had died very suddenly and she
had felt obliged to go to his funeral; Abby Goode had been
home on a visit and everybody said she didn't look a day
over twenty-five, though she was every bit of forty-four.
Then, taking a little pile of samples from her work basket
which stood on the table, she showed him a piece of black
brocaded satin. "Miss Willy is making me a dress out of
this to wear in New York with you. I don't suppose you
noticed whether or not they were wearing brocade."

No, he hadn't noticed, but the sample was very pretty,
he thought. "Why don't you buy a dress there, Virginia? It
would save you so much trouble."

"Poor little Miss Willy has set her heart on making it,
Oliver. And, besides, I shan't have time if we go only the
day before."

A flush had come to her face; at the corners of her
mouth a tender little smile rippled; and her look of faded
sweetness gave place for an instant to the warmth and the
animation of girlhood. But the excitement of girlhood could
not restore to her the freshness of youth. Her pleasure
was the pleasure of middle-age; the wistful
expectancy in her face was

the expectancy of one whose interests are centred on little
things. That inviolable quality of self-sacrifice, the quality
which knit her soul to the enduring soul of her race, had
enabled her to find happiness in the simple act of
renouncement. The quiet years had kept undiminished the
inordinate capacity for enjoyment, the exaggerated
appreciation of trivial favours, which had filled Mrs.
Pendleton's life with a flutter of thankfulness; and while
Viriginia smoothed the piece of black brocade on her knee,
she might have been the re-arisen pensive spirit of her
mother. Of the two, perhaps because she had ceased to
wish for anything for herself, she was happier than Oliver.

All through dinner, while her soft anxious eyes dwelt on
him over the bowl of pink roses in the centre of the table,
he tried hard to throw himself into her narrow life, to talk
only of things in which he felt that she was interested. Slight
as the effort was, he could see her gratitude in her face,
could hear it in the gentle silvery sound of her voice. When
he praised the dinner, she blushed like a girl; when he made
her describe the dress which Miss Willy was making, she
grew as excited as if she had been speaking of the sacred
white satin she had worn as a bride. So little was needed to
make her happy - that was the pathos! She was satisfied
with the crumbs of life, and yet they were denied her.
Though she had been alone ever since Lucy's wedding, she
accepted his belated visit as thankfully as if it were a
gratuitous gift. "It is so good of you to come down, dear,
when you are needed every minute in New York," she
murmured, with a caressing touch on his arm, and, looking
at her, he was reminded of Mrs. Pendleton's tremulous
pleasure in the sweets that

came to her on little trays from her neighbours. Once she had
said eagerly, "It will be so nice to see Miss Oldcastle,
Oliver," and he had answered in a constrained, tone which he
tried to make light and casual, "I am not sure that the part
is going to suit her."

Then he had changed the subject abruptly by rising from
the table and asking her to let him see her latest letter from
Harry.

The next morning he went out after breakfast to consult
Cyrus about some investments, while Virginia laid out the
lengths of brocade on the bed in the spare room, and sat
down to wait for the arrival of the dressmaker. Outside,
the trees were still white from the storm, and the wind,
blowing through them, made a dry crackling sound as if it
were rattling thorns in a forest. Though it was intensely
cold, the sunshine fell in golden bars over the pavement
and filled the town with a dazzling brilliancy through which
the little seamstress was seen presently making her way.
Alert, bird-like, consumed with her insatiable interest in
other people, she entered, after she had removed her
bonnet and wraps, and began to spread out her patterns. It
was twenty-odd years since she had made the white satin
dress in which Virginia was married, yet she looked hardly
a day older than she had done when she knelt at the girl's
feet and envied her happiness while she pinned up the
shining train. Failing love, she had filled her life with an
inextinguishable curiosity; and this passion, being independent
of the desires of others, was proof alike against disillusionment
and the destructive processes of time.

"So Mr. Treadwell has come home," she remarked,
with a tentative flourish of the scissors. "I declare

he gets handsomer every day that he lives. It suits him
somehow to fill out, or it may be that I'm partial to fat like
my poor mother before me."

"He does look well, but I'd hardly call him fat, would
you?"

"Well, he's stouter than he used to be, anyway. Did he
say when he was going to take you back with him?"

"Next Wednesday. We'll have to hurry to get this dress
ready in time."

"I'll start right in at it. Have you made up your mind
whether you'll have it princess or a separate waist and
skirt?"

"I'm a little too thin for a princess gown, don't you think?
Hadn't I better have it made like that black poplin which
everybody thought looked so well on me?"

"But it ain't half so stylish as the princess. You just let me
put a few cambric ruffles inside the bust and you'll stand
out a plenty. I was reading in a fashion sheet only yesterday
that they are trying to look as flat as they can manage in
Paris."

"Well, I'll try it," murmured Virginia uncertainly, for her
standards of dress were so vague that she was thankful to
be able to rely on Miss Willy's self-constituted authority.

"You just leave it to me," was the dressmaker's reply,
while she thrust the point of the scissors into the gleaming
brocade on the bed.

The morning passed so quickly amid cutting, basting,
and gossip, that it came as a surprise to Virginia when she
heard the front door open and shut and Oliver's rapid step
mounting the stairs. Meeting him in the hall, she led the way
into her bedroom, and asked with

the caressing, slightly conciliatory manner which expressed
so perfectly her attitude toward life:

"Did you see Uncle Cyrus?"

"Yes, and he was nicer than I have ever known him to
be. By the way, Virginia, I've transferred enough property
to you to bring you in a separate income. This was really
what I went down about."

"But what is the matter, dear? Don't you feel well? Have
you had any worries that you haven't told me?"

"Oh, I'm all right, but it's better so in case something
should happen."

"But what could possibly happen? I never saw you look
better. Miss Willy was just saying so."

He turned away, not impatiently, but as one who is
seeking to hide an emotion which has become too strong.
Then without replying to her question, he muttered
something about "a number of letters to write before
dinner," and hurried out of the room and downstairs to his
study.

"I wonder if he has lost money," she thought, vaguely
troubled, as she instinctively straightened the brushes he
had disarranged on the bureau. "Poor Oliver! He seems to
think about nothing but money now, and he used to be so
romantic."

He used to be so romantic! She repeated this to Susan
that evening when, after Miss Willy's departure for the
night, she took her friend into the spare room to show her
the first shapings of the princess gown.

"Do you remember that we used to call him an incurable
Don Quixote?" she asked. "And now he has become so
different that at times it makes me smile to think of him as
he was when I first knew him. I suppose

it's better so, it's more normal. He used to be what
Uncle Cyrus called 'flighty,' bent on reforming the world
and on improving people, you know, and now he doesn't
seem to care whether outside things are good or bad, just
as long as his plays go well and he can give us all the
money we want."

light, with which Oliver and the girls had insisted on
replacing the gas-jets that she preferred, cast a hard glittter
over the hollowed lines of her face and over the thinning
curls which she had striven to brush back from her temples.
Her figure, unassisted as yet by Miss Willy's ruffles, looked
so fragile in the pitiless glare that his heart melted in one of
those waves of sentimentality which, because they were
impotent to affect his conduct, cost him so little. As she
stood there, he realized more acutely than he had ever
done before how utterly stationary she had remained since
he married her. With her sweetness, her humility, her
old-fashioned courtesy and consideration for others, she
belonged still in the honey-scented twilight of the eighties.
While he had moved with the world, she, who was
confirmed in the traditions of another age, had never
altered in spirit since that ecstatic moment when he had first
loved her. The charm, the grace, the virtues, even the look
of gentle goodness which had won his heart, were all there
just as they had been when she was twenty. Except for the
fading flesh, the woman had not changed; only the needs
and the desires of the man were different. Only the
resurgent youth in him was again demanding youth for its
mate.

"Why, my trunk is all packed," she replied. "Has
anything happened?"

"Oh, no, I was only wondering how you would manage
to amuse yourself. You know I shall be at the theatre most
of the time."

"But you mustn't have me on your mind a minute, Oliver.
I won't go a step unless you promise me not to worry
about me a bit. It's all so new to me that I

His eagerness to provide entertainment for her touched
her as deeply as if it had been a proof of his love instead of
his anxiety, and she determined in her heart that if she were
lonesome a minute he must never suspect it. Ennui, having
its roots in an egoism she did not possess, was unknown to
her.

"That will be lovely, dear. Lucy wrote me when she was
there on her wedding trip that she used to sit for hours in
the corridor looking at the people that went by, and that it
was as good as a play."

"That settles it. I'll telegraph for rooms," he said
cheerfully, relieved to find that she fell in so readily with his
suggestion.

She was giving a last caressing pat to the tray before
closing the trunk, and the look of her thin hands, with their
slightly swollen knuckles, caused him to lean forward
suddenly and wrest the keys away from her.

"Let me do that. I hate to see you stooping," he said.

The telegram was sent, and late the next evening, as they
rolled through the brilliant streets towards the hotel,
Virginia's interest was as effervescent as if she were indeed
the girl that she almost felt herself to have become. The
sound of the streets excited her like martial music, and little
gasps of surprise and pleasure broke from her lips as the
taxicab turned into Broadway. It was all so different from
her other visit when she had come alone to find Oliver, sick
with failure, in the dismal bedroom of that hotel. Now it

seemed to her that the city had grown younger, that it was
more awake, that it was brighter, gayer, and that she
herself had a part in its brightness and its gaiety. The
crowds on Broadway seemed keeping step to some happy
tune, and she felt that her heart was dancing with them, so
elated, so girlishly irresponsible was her mood.

"Why, Oliver, there is a sign of your play with a picture
of Miss Oldcastle on it!" she exclaimed delightedly,
pointing to an advertisement before a theatre they were
passing. Then, suddenly, it appeared to her that the whole
city was waving this advertisement. Wherever she turned
"The Home" stared back at her, an orgy of red and blue
surrounding the smiling effigy of the actress. And this proof
of Oliver's fame thrilled her as she had not been thrilled
since the telegram had come announcing that Harry had
won the scholarship which would take him to Oxford. The
woman's power of sinking her ambition and even her
identity into the activities of the man was deeply interwoven
with all that was essential and permanent in her soul. Her
keenest joys, as well as her sharpest sorrows, had never belonged
to herself, but to others. It was doubtful, indeed, if, since the
day of her marriage, she had been profoundly moved by any feeling
which was centred merely in a personal desire. She had
wanted things for Oliver and for the children, but for herself
there had been no separate existence apart from them.

"Oliver, I never dreamed that it would be like this. The
play will be a great success - even a greater one than the
last, won't it, dear?" Her face, with its exquisite look of
exaltation, of self-forgetfulness, was turned

eagerly towards the crowd of feverish pleasure-seekers
that passed on, pursuing its little joys, under the garish signs
of the street.

"Well, it ought to
be," he returned; "it's bad enough
anyway."

His eyes, like hers, were
fixed on the thronging streets,
but, unlike hers, they reflected the restless animation, the
pathetic hunger, which made each of those passing faces
appear to be the plastic medium of an insatiable craving for
life. Handsome, well-preserved, a little over-coloured, a
little square of figure, with his look of worldly importance,
of assured material success, he stood to-day, as Cyrus had
stood a quarter of a century ago, as an imposing example
of that Treadwell spirit from which his youth had revolted.

That night, when they had
finished dinner, and Oliver, in
response to a telephone message, had hurried down to the
theatre, Virginia went upstairs to her room and, after
putting on the lavender silk dressing-gown which Miss
Willy had made for the occasion, sat down to write her
weekly letter to Harry.

MY DARLING BOY.

I know you will be
surprised to see from this letter that I am
really in New York at last - and at the Waldorf! It seems almost
like a dream to me, and whenever I shut my eyes, I find myself
forgetting that I am not in Dinwiddie - but, you remember,
your father had always promised me that I should come for the
first night of his new play, which will be acted to-morrow. You
simply can't imagine till you get here how famous he is and how
interested people are in everything about him, even the smallest
trifles. Wherever you look you see advertisements of his plays
(he has three running now) and coming up Broadway for only a
block or two last night, I am sure that I saw Miss Oldcastle's picture

a dozen times. I should think she would hate dreadfully to
have to make herself so conspicuous - for she has a nice, refined
face - but Oliver says all actresses have to do it if they want to get
on. He takes all the fuss they make over him just as if he despised
it, though I am sure that in his heart he can't help being pleased.
While we were having dinner, everybody in the dining-room was
turning to look at him, and if I hadn't known, of course, that not a
soul was thinking of me, I should have felt badly because I hadn't
time to change my dress after I got here. All the other women
were beautifully dressed (I never dreamed that there were so many
diamonds in the world. Miss Willy would simply go crazy over
them), but didn't mind a bit, and if anybody thought of me at all,
of course, they knew that I had just stepped off the train. After
dinner your father went to the theatre, and I sat downstairs alone
in the corridor for a while and watched the people coming and going.
It was perfectly fascinating at first. I never saw so many beautiful
women, and their hair was arranged in such a lovely way, all just
alike, that it must have taken hours to do each head. The fashions
that are worn here are not in the least like those of Dinwiddie,
though Miss Willy made my black brocade exactly like one in a fashion
plate that came directly from Paris, but I know that you aren't as
much interested in this as Lucy and Jenny would be. The dear girls
are both well, and Lucy is carried away with her stepchildren. She
says she doesn't see why every woman doesn't marry a widower. Isn't
that exactly like Lucy? She is always so funny. If only one of you were
here with me, I should enjoy every minute, but after I'd sat there for a
while in the midst of all those strangers, I began to feel a little lonely,
so I came upstairs to write you this letter. New York is a fascinating
place to visit, but I am glad I live in Dinwiddie where everybody knows
me. And now, my dearest boy, I must tell you how perfectly overjoyed I was
to get your last letter, and to know that you are so delighted with Oxford.
I think of you every minute, and I pray for you the last thing at night before
I get into bed. Try to keep well and strong, and if you get a cold, be
sure not to let it run on till it turns to a hacking cough. Remember that
Doctor Fraser always used to say that every cough, no matter how slight,
is dangerous. I hope you aren't studying too hard or overdoing athletics.
It is so easy to tax one's strength too much when one gets excited. I am

sure I don't know what to think of the English students being
"standoffish" with Americans. It seems very foolish of them not to be
nice and friendly, especially to Virginians, who were really English in the
beginning. But I am glad that you don't mind, and that you would rather
be a countryman of George Washington than a countryman of George the
Third. Of course England is the greatest country in the world - you
remember your grandfather always said that - and we owe it everything
that we have, but I think it very silly of English people to be stiff
and ill-mannered.

I hope you still read
your Bible, darling, and that you find time to go to
church once every Sunday. Even if it seems a waste of time to you, it
would have pleased your grandfather, and for his sake I hope you will go
whenever you can possibly do so. It was so sweet of you to write in
Addison's Walk because you did not want to miss my Sunday letter and
yet the day was too beautiful not to be out of doors. God only knows,
my boy, what a comfort you are to me. There was never a better son nor
one who was loved more devotedly.

YOUR MOTHER.

In
the morning, with the breakfast tray, there arrived a
bunch of orchids from one of Oliver's theatrical friends,
who had heard that his wife was in town; and while
Virginia laid the box carefully in the bathtub, her eyes
shone with the grateful light which came into them
whenever some one did her a small kindness or courtesy.

"They will be lovely for me to wear to-night, Oliver. It
was so nice of him to send them, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was rather nice," Oliver replied, looking up from
his paper at the pleased sound of her voice. Ever since his
return at a late hour last night, she had noticed the
nervousness in his manner and had sympathetically
attributed it to his anxiety about the fate of his play. It was
so like Oliver to be silent and self-absorbed when he was
anxious.

Through the day he was absent, and when he returned,
in the evening, to dress for the theatre, she was standing
before the mirror fastening the bunch of orchids on the
front of her gown. As he entered, she turned toward him
with a look of eager interest, of pleasant yet anxious
excitement. She had never in her life, except on the
morning of her wedding day, taken so long to dress; but it
seemed to her important that as Oliver's wife she should
look as nice as she could.

"Am I all right?" she asked timidly, while she cast a
doubtful glance in the mirror at the skirt of the black
brocade.

"Yes, you're all right," he responded, without looking at
her, and the suppressed pain in his voice caused her to
move suddenly toward him with the question, "Aren't you
well, Oliver?"

"Oh, I'm well, but I'm tired. I had a headache on the
way up and I haven't been able to shake it off."

"Shall I get you something for it?"

"No, it will pass. I'd like a nap, but I suppose it's time
for me to dress."

"Yes, it's half-past six, and we've ordered dinner for
seven."

He went into the dressing-room, and turning again to the
mirror, she changed the position of the bunch of orchids,
and gave a little dissatisfied pat to the hair on her forehead.
If only she could bring back some of the bloom and the
freshness of youth! The glow had gone out of her eyes; the
winged happiness, which had given her face the look as of
one flying towards life, had passed, leaving her features a
little wan and drawn, and fading her delicate skin to the
colour of withered flowers. Yet the little smile, which

lingered like autumn sunshine around her lips, was full of
that sweetness which time could not destroy, because it
belonged not to her flesh, but to an unalterable quality of
her soul; and this sweetness, which she exhaled like a
fragrance, would cause perhaps one of a hundred strangers
to glance after her with the thought, "How lovely that
woman must once have been!"

"Are you ready?" asked Oliver, coming out of his
dressing-room, and again she started and turned quickly
towards him, because it seemed to her that she was
hearing his voice for the first time. So nervous, so irritable,
so quivering with suppressed feeling, was the sound of it,
that she hesitated between the longing to offer sympathy
and the fear that her words might only add to his suffering.

"Yes, I am quite ready," she answered, without adding
that she had been ready for more than an hour; and picking
up her wrap from the bed, she passed ahead of him
through the door which he had opened. As he stopped to
draw the key from the lock, her eyes rested with pride on
the gloss of his hair, which had gone grey in the last year,
and on his figure, with its square shoulders and its look of
obvious distinction, as of a man who had achieved results
so emphatically that it was impossible either to overlook or
to belittle them. How splendid he looked! And what a pity
that, after all his triumphs, he should still be so nervous on
the first night of a play!

In the elevator there was a woman in an ermine wrap,
with Titian hair under a jewelled net; and Virginia's eyes
were suffused with pleasure as she gazed at her. "I never
saw any one so beautiful!" she exclaimed

to Oliver, as they stepped out into the hall, but he
merely replied indifferently: "Was she? I didn't notice."
Then his tone lost its deadness. "If you'll wait here a
minute, I'd like to speak to Cranston about something," he
said, almost eagerly. "I shan't keep you a second."

"Don't worry about me," she answered cheerfully,
pleased at the sudden change in his manner. "Stay as long
as you like. I never get tired watching the people."

He hurried off, while, dazzled by the lights, she drew
back behind a sheltering palm, and stood a little screened
from the brilliant crowd in which she took such innocent
pleasure. "How I wish Miss Willy could be here," she
thought, for it was impossible for her to feel perfect
enjoyment while there existed the knowledge that another
person would have found even greater delight in the scene
than she was finding herself. "How gay they all look - and
there are not any old people. Everybody, even the white-haired
women, dress as if they were girls. I wonder what it
is that gives them all this gloss as if they had been polished,
the same gloss that has come on Oliver since he has been
so successful? What a short time he stayed. He is coming
back already, and every single person is turning to look at
him."

Then a voice beyond the palm spoke as distinctly as if
the words were uttered into her ear. "That's Treadwell
over there - a good-looking man, isn't he? - but have you
seen the dowdy, middle-aged woman he is married to? It's
a pity that all great men marry young - and now they say,
you know, that he is madly in love with Margaret
Oldcastle - "

CHAPTER V
BITTERNESS
IN THE night, after a restless sleep, she awoke in
terror. A hundred incidents, a hundred phrases, looks,
gestures, which she had thought meaningless until last
evening, flashed out of the darkness and hung there, blazing,
against the background of the night. Yesterday these things
had appeared purposeless; and now it seemed to her that
only her incredible blindness, only her childish inability to
face any painful fact until it struck her between the eyes,
had kept her from discovering the truth before it was thrust
on her by the idle chatter of strangers. A curious rigidity, as
if she had been suddenly paralyzed, passed from her heart,
which seemed to have ceased beating, and crept through
her limbs to her motionless hands and feet. Though she
longed to call out and awaken Oliver, who, complaining of
insomnia, spent the night in the adjoining room, this
immobility, which was like the graven immobility of death,
held her imprisoned there as speechless and still as if she lay
in her coffin. Only her brain seemed on fire, so pitilessly, so
horribly alive had it become.

From the street beyond the dim square of the window,
across which the curtains were drawn, she could hear the
ceaseless passing of carriages and motor cars; but her
thoughts had grown so confused that for a long

while, as she lay there, chill and rigid under the bedclothes,
she could not separate the outside sounds from the tumult
within her brain. "Now that I know the truth I must decide
what is best to do," she thought quite calmly. "As soon as
this noise stops I must think it all over and decide what is
best to do." But around this one lucid idea the discordant
roar of the streets seemed to gather force until it raged with
the violence of a storm. It was impossible to think clearly
until this noise, which, in some strange way, was both in the
street outside and within the secret chambers of her soul,
had subsided and given place to the quiet of night again.
Then gradually the tempest of sound died away, and in the
midst of the stillness which followed it she lived over every
hour, every minute, of that last evening when it had seemed
to her that she was crucified by Oliver's triumph. She saw
him as he came towards her down the shining corridor,
easy, brilliant, impressive, a little bored by his celebrity, yet
with the look of vital well-being, of second youth, which
separated and distinguished him from the curious gazers
among whom he moved. She saw him opposite to her
during the long dinner, which she could not eat; she saw
him beside her in the car which carried them to the theatre;
and clearer than ever, as if a burning iron had seared the
memory into her brain, she saw him lean on the railing of
the box, with his eyes on the stage where Margaret
Oldcastle, against the lowered curtain, smiled her charming
smile at the house. It had been a wonderful night, and
through it all she had felt the iron nails of her crucifixion
driven into her soul.

she had awakened, she left the bed and went over to the
window, where she drew the heavy curtains aside. In Fifth
Avenue the electric lights sparkled like frost on the
pavement, while beyond the roofs of the houses the first
melancholy glow of a winter's sunrise was suffusing the sky
with red. While she watched it, a wave of unutterable
loneliness swept over her - of that profound spiritual
loneliness which comes to one at dawn in a great city, when
knowledge of the sleeping millions within reach seems only
to intensify the fact of individual littleness and isolation. She
felt that she stood alone, not merely in the world, but in the
universe; and the thought that Oliver slept there in the next
room made more poignant this feeling, as though she were
solitary and detached in the midst of limitless space. Even if
she called him and he came to her, she could not reach him.
Even if he stood at her side, the immeasurable distance
between them would not lessen.

When the morning came, she dressed herself in her
prettiest gown, a violet cloth, with ruffles of old lace at the
throat and wrists; but this dress, of which she had been so
proud in Dinwiddie that she had saved it for months in
order to have it fresh for New York, appeared somehow
to have lost its charm and distinction, and she knew that
last evening had not only destroyed her happiness, but had
robbed her of her confidence in the taste and the
workmanship of Miss Willy. Knowledge, she saw now,
had shattered the little beliefs of life as well as the large
ones.

Oliver liked to breakfast in his dressing-gown, fresh
from his bath and eager for the papers, so when he came
hurriedly into the sitting-room, the shining

tray was already awaiting him, and she sat pouring his
coffee in a band of sunlight beside the table. This sunlight,
so merciful to the violet gown, shone pitilessly on the
darkened hollows which the night had left under her eyes,
and on the little lines which had gathered around her
bravely smiling mouth.

"It was a wonderful success, all the papers say so,
Oliver," she said, when he had seated himself at the other
end of the table and taken the coffee from her hand, which
shook in spite of her effort.

"Yes, it went off well, there's no doubt of it," he
answered cheerfully, so cheerfully that for a minute a blind
hope shot trembling through her mind. Could it all have
been a dream? Was there some dreadful mistake? Would
she presently discover that she had imagined that night of
useless agony through which she had passed?

"The audience was so sympathetic. I saw a number of
women crying in the last act when the heroine comes back
to her old home."

"It caught them. I thought it would. It's the kind of thing
they like."

He opened a paper as he spoke, and seeing that he
wanted to read the criticisms, she broke his eggs for him,
and then turning to her own breakfast tried in vain to
swallow the piece of toast which she had buttered. But it
was useless. She could not eat; she could not even drink
her coffee, which had stood so long that it had grown
tepid. A feeling of spiritual nausea, beside which all
physical sensations were as trivial and meaningless as the
stinging of wasps, pervaded her soul and body, and
choked her, like unshed tears, whenever she tried to force
a bit of food

between her trembling lips. All the casual interests with
which she filled her days, those seemingly small, yet actually
tremendous interests without which daily life becomes
almost unlivable, flagged suddenly and died while she sat
there. Nothing mattered any longer, neither the universe nor
that little circle of it which she inhabited, neither life nor
death, neither Oliver's success nor the food which she was
trying to eat. This strange sickness which had fallen upon
her affected not only her soul and body, but everything that
surrounded her, every person or object at which she
looked, every stranger in the street below, every roof which
she could see sharply outlined against the glittering blue of
the sky. Something had passed out of them all, some
essential quality which united them to reality, some inner
secret of being without which the animate and the inanimate
alike became no better than phantoms. The spirit which
made life vital had gone out of the world. And she felt that
this would always be so, that the next minute and the next
year and all the years that came afterwards would bring to
her merely the effort of living - since Life, having used her
for its dominant purpose, had no further need of her. Once
only the thought occurred to her that there were women
who might keep their own even now by fighting against the
loss of it, by passionately refusing to surrender what they
could no longer hold as a gift. But with the idea there came
also that self-knowledge which told her that she was not
one of these. The strength in her was the strength of
passiveness; she could endure, but she could not battle.
Long ago, as long ago as the night on which she had
watched in the shadow

of death beside Harry's bed, she had lost that energy of
soul which had once flamed up in her with her three days'
jealousy of Abby. It was her youth and beauty then which
had inspirited her, and she was wise enough to know that
the passions which become youth appear ridiculous in
middle-age.

Having drunk his coffee, Oliver passed his cup to her,
and laid down his paper.

"You look tired, Virginia. I hope it hasn't been too much
for you?"

"Oh, no. Have you quite got over your headache?"

"Pretty much, but those lights last night were rather
trying. Don't put any cream in this time. I want the
stimulant."

"Perhaps it has got cold. Shall I ring for fresh?"

"It doesn't matter. This will do quite as well. Have you
any shopping that you would like to do this morning?"

Shopping! When her whole world had crumbled around
her! For an instant the lump in her throat made speech
impossible; then summoning that mild yet indestructible
spirit, which was as the spirit of all those generations of
women who lived in her blood, she answered gently:

"Yes, I had intended to buy some presents for the girls."

"Then you'd better take a taxicab for the morning. I
suppose you know the names of the shops you want to go
to?"

"Oh, yes. I know the names. Are you going to the
theatre?"

"I've got to change a few lines in the play, and the
sooner I go about it the better."

"Then don't bother about me, dear. I'll just put on my
long coat over this dress and go out right after breakfast."

"But you haven't eaten anything," he remarked, glancing
at her plate.

"I wasn't hungry. The fresh air will do me good. It has
turned so much warmer, and the snow is all melting."

As she spoke, she rose from the table and began to
prepare herself for the street, putting on the black hat with
the ostrich tip and the bunch of violets on one side, which
didn't seem just right since she had come to New York,
and carefully wrapping the ends of her fur neck-piece
around her throat. It was already ten o'clock, for Oliver
had slept late, and she must be hurrying if she hoped to get
through her shopping before luncheon. While she dressed,
a wan spirit of humour entered into her, and she saw how
absurd it was that she should rush about from shop to shop,
buying things that did not matter in order to fill a life that
mattered as little as they did. To her, whose mental outlook
had had in it so little humour, it seemed suddenly that the
whole of life was ridiculous. Why should she have sat
there, pouring Oliver's coffee and talking to him about
insignificant things, when her heart was bursting with this
sense of something gone out of existence, with this torturing
realization of the irretrievable failure of love?

Taking up her muff and her little black bag from the
bureau, she looked back at him with a smile as she turned
towards the door.

"I'm afraid I can't. I've an appointment downtown, but
I'll come back as early as I can."

Then she went out and along the hall to the elevator, in
which there was a little girl, who reminded her of Jenny, in
charge of a governess in spectacles. She smiled at her
almost unconsciously, so spontaneous, so interwoven with
her every mood was her love for children; but the little girl,
being very proper for her years, did not smile back, and a
stab of pain went through Virginia's heart.

"Even children have ceased to care for me," she thought.

At the door, where she waited a few minutes for her
taxicab, a young bride, with her eyes shining with joy,
stood watching her husband while he talked with an
acquaintance, and it seemed to Virginia that it was a vision
of her own youth which had risen to torment her. "That was
the way I looked at Oliver twenty-five years ago," she said
to herself; "twenty-five years ago, when I was young and
he loved me." Then, even while the intolerable pain was still
in her heart, she felt that something of the buoyant
hopefulness of that other bride entered into her and
restored her courage. A resolution, so new that it was born
of the joyous glance of a stranger, and yet so old that it
seemed a part of that lost spirit of youth which had once
carried her in a wild race over the Virginian meadows, a
resolution which belonged at the same time to this woman
and to herself in her and mingled like a draught of wine
with her blood. "I will not give up," she thought. "I will go to
her. Perhaps she does not know - perhaps she does not
understand. I will go to her, and everything may

be different." Then her taxicab was called, and stepping
into it, she gave the name not of a shop, but of the
apartment house in which Margaret Oldcastle lived.

It was one of those February days when, because
of the promise of spring in the air, men begin suddenly
to think of April. The sky was of an intense blue,
with little clouds, as soft as feathers, above the western
horizon. On the pavement the last patches of snow
were rapidly melting, and the gentle breeze which
blew in at the open window of the cab, was
like a caressing breath on Virginia's cheek. "It
must be that she does not understand," she repeated,
and this thought gave her confidence and
filled her with that unconquerable hope of the
future without which she felt that living would be
impossible. Even the faces in the street cheered
her, for it seemed to her that if life were really
what she had believed it to be last night, these
men and women could not walk so buoyantly, could
not smile so gaily, could not spend so much thought
and time on the way they looked and the things
they wore. "No, it must have been a mistake,
a ghastly mistake," she insisted almost passionately.
"Some day we shall laugh over it together
as we laughed over my jealousy of Abby.
He never loved Abby, not for a minute, and yet I
imagined that he did and suffered agony because of
it." And her taxicab went on merrily between the
cheerful crowds on the pavements, gliding among gorgeous
motor cars and carriages drawn by high-stepping
horses and pedlers' carts drawn by horses that stepped
high no longer, among rich people and poor people,

among surfeited people and hungry people, among gay
people and sad people, among contented people and
rebellious people - among all these, who hid their
happiness or their sorrow under the mask of their features,
her cab spun onward bearing her lightly on the most
reckless act of her life.

At the door of the apartment house she was told that
Miss Oldcastle could not be seen, but, after sending up her
card and waiting a few moments in the hall before a desk
which reminded her of a gilded squirrel-cage, she was
escorted to the elevator and borne upward to the ninth
landing. Here, in response to the tinkle of a little bell outside
of a door, she was ushered into a reception room which
was so bare alike of unnecessary furniture and of the
Victorian tradition to which she was accustomed, that for
an instant she stood confused by the very strangeness of
her surroundings. Then a charming voice, with what
sounded to her ears as an affected precision of speech,
said: "Mrs. Treadwell, this is so good of you!" and, turning,
she found herself face to face with the other woman in
Oliver's life.

"I saw you at the play last night," the voice went on, "and
I hoped to get a chance to speak to you, but the reporters
simply invaded my dressing-room. Won't you sit here in the
sunshine? Shall I close the window, or, like myself, are you
a worshipper of the sun?"

"Oh, no, leave it open. I like it." At any other moment
she would have been afraid of an open window in
February; but it seemed to her now that if she could not
feel the air in her face she should faint. With the first sight of
Margaret Oldcastle, as she looked

into that smiling face, in which the inextinguishable youth
was less a period of life than an attribute of spirit, she
realized that she was fighting not a woman, but the very
structure of life. The glamour of the footlights had
contributed nothing to the flame-like personality of the
actress. In her simple frock of brown woollen, with a wide
collar of white lawn turned back from her splendid throat,
she embodied not so much the fugitive charm of youth, as
that burning vitality over which age has no power. The
intellect in her spoke through her noble rather than beautiful
features, through her ardent eyes, through her resolute
mouth, through every perfect gesture with which she
accompanied her words. She stood not only for the
elemental forces, but for the free woman; and her freedom,
like that of man, had been built upon the strewn bodies of
the weaker. The law of sacrifice, which is the basic law of
life, ruled here as it ruled in mother-love and in the industrial
warfare of men. Her triumph was less the triumph of the
individual than of the type. The justice not of society, but of
nature, was on her side, for she was one with evolution and
with the resistless principle of change. Vaguely, without
knowing that she realized these things, Virginia felt that the
struggle was useless; and with the sense of failure there
awoke in her that instinct of good breeding, that inherited
obligation to keep the surface of life sweet, which was so
much older and so much stronger than the revolt in her soul.

"You were wonderful last night. I wanted to tell you how
wonderful I thought you," she said gently. "You made the
play a success - all the papers say so this morning."

"Well, it was an easy play to make successful," replied
the other, while a fleeting curiosity, as though she were
trying to explain something which she did not quite
understand, appeared in her face and made it, with its
redundant vitality, almost coarse for an instant. "It's the
kind the public wants, you couldn't help making it go."

The almost imperceptible conflict which had flashed in
their eyes when they met, had died suddenly down, and the
dignity which had been on the side of the other woman
appeared to have passed from her to Virginia. This dignity,
which was not that of triumph, but of a defeat which
surrenders everything except the inviolable sanctities of the
spirit, shielded her like an impenetrable armour against both
resentment and pity. She stood there wrapped in a
gentleness more unassailable than any passion.

"You did a great deal for it and a great deal for my
husband," she said, while her voice lingered unconsciously
over the word. "He has told me often that without your
acting he could never have reached the position he holds."

Then, because it was impossible to say the things she
had come to say, because even in the supreme crises of life
she could not lay down the manner of a lady, she smiled
the grave smile with which her mother had walked through
a ruined country, and taking up her muff, which she had
laid on the table, passed out into the hall. She had let the
chance go by, she had failed in her errand, yet she knew
that, even though it cost her her life, even though it cost her
a thing far dearer than life - her happiness - she could
not have done otherwise. In the crucial moment

it was principle and not passion which she obeyed; but this
principle, filtering down through generations had become so
inseparable from the sources of character, it had passed at
last through the intellect into the blood. She could no more
have bared her soul to that other woman than she could
have stripped her body naked in the market-place.

At the door her cab was still waiting, and she gave the
driver the name of the toy shop at which she intended to buy
presents for Lucy's stepchildren. Though her heart was
breaking within her, there was no impatience in her manner
when she was obliged to wait some time before she could
find the particular sort of doll for which Lucy had written;
and she smiled at the apologetic shopgirl with the forbearing
consideration for others which grief could not destroy. She
put her own anguish aside as utterly in the selection of the
doll as she would have done had it been the peace of
nations and not a child's pleasure that depended upon her
effacement of self. Then, when the purchase was made, she
took out her shopping list from her bag and passed as
conscientiously to the choice of Jenny's clothes. Not until the
morning had gone, and she rolled again up Fifth Avenue
towards the hotel, did she permit her thoughts to return to
the stifled agony within her heart.

To her surprise Oliver was awaiting her in their sitting-room,
and with her first look into his face, she understood
that he had reached in her absence a decision against which
he had struggled for days. For an instant her strength
seemed fainting as before an impossible effort. Then the
shame in his eyes awoke in her the longing to protect him,
to spare him,

to make even this terrible moment easier for him than he
could make it alone. With the feeling, a crowd of memories
thronged through her mind, as though called there by that
impulse to shield which was so deeply interwoven with the
primal passion of motherhood. She saw Oliver's face as it
had looked on that spring afternoon when she had first seen
him; she saw it as he put the ring on her hand at the altar;
she saw it bending over her after the birth of her first child;
and then suddenly his face changed to the face of Harry,
and she saw again the little bed under the hanging sheet and
herself sitting there in the faintly quivering circle of light. She
watched again the slow fall of the leaves, one by one, as
they turned at the stem and drifted against the white curtains
of the window across the street.

"Oliver," she said gently, so gently that she might have
been speaking to her sick child, "would you rather that I
should go back to Dinwiddie to-night?"

He did not answer, but, turning away from her, laid his
head down on his arm, which he had outstretched on the
table, and she saw a shiver of pain pass through his body as
if it had been struck a physical blow. And just as she had
put herself aside when she bought the doll, so now she
forgot her own suffering in the longing to respond to his
need.

"I can take the night train - now that I have seen the
play there is no reason why I should stay. I have got
through my shopping."

Raising his head, he looked up into her face. "Whatever
happens, Virginia, will you believe that I never wanted to
hurt you?" he asked.

and a fear entered her mind lest she should faint or weep
and so make things harder than they should be able to
bear.

"You mean that something must happen - that there will
be a break between us?" she said.

Leaving the table, he walked to the window and back
before he answered her.

"I can't go on this way. I'm not that sort. A generation
ago, I suppose, we should have done it - but we've lost
grip, we've lost endurance." Then he cried out suddenly, as
if he were justifying himself: "It is hell. I've been in hell for a
year - don't you see it?"

After his violence, her voice sounded almost lifeless, so
quiet, so utterly free from passion, was its quality.

"As long as that - for a year?" she asked.

"Oh, longer, but it has got worse. It has got
unendurable. I've fought - God knows I've fought - but I
can't stand it. I've got to do something. I've got to find a
way. You must have seen it coming, Virginia. You must
have seen that this thing is stronger than I am."

"Do - do you want her so much?" and she, who had
learned from life not to want, looked at him with the pity
which he might have seen in her eyes had he stabbed her.

"So much that I'm going mad. There's no other end to it.
It's been coming on for two years - all the time I've been
away from Dinwiddie I've been fighting it."

She did not answer, and when, after the silence had
grown oppressive, he turned back from the window
through which he had been gazing, he could not

be sure that she had heard him. So still she seemed that
she was like a woman of marble.

"You're too good for me, that's the trouble. You've been
too good for me from the beginning," he said.

Unfastening her coat, which she had kept on, she laid it
on the sofa at her back, and then put up her hands to take
out her hatpins.

"I must pack my things," she said suddenly. "Will you
engage my berth back to Dinwiddie for to-night?"

He nodded without speaking, and she added hastily, "I
shan't go down again before starting. But there is no need
that you should go to the train with me."

At this he turned back from the door where he had
waited with his hand on the knob. "Won't you let me do
even that?" he asked, and his voice sounded so like Harry's
that a sob broke from her lips. The point was so small a
one - all points seemed to her so small - that her will
died down and she yielded without protest. What did it matter
- what did anything matter to her now?

"I'll send up your luncheon," he added almost gratefully.
"You will be ill if you don't eat something."

"No, please don't. I am not hungry," she answered, and
then he went out softly, as though he were leaving a
sick-room, and left her alone with her anguish - and her
packing.

Without turning in her chair, without taking off her hat,
from which she had drawn the pins, she sat there like a
woman in whom the spirit has been suddenly stricken.
Beyond the window the perfect day, with its haunting
reminder of the spring, was lengthening slowly into
afternoon, and through the slant

sunbeams the same gay crowd passed in streams on the
pavements. On the roof of one of the opposite houses a
flag was flying, and it seemed to her that the sight of that
flag waving under the blue sky was bound up forever with
the intolerable pain in her heart. And with that strange
passivity of the nerves which nature mercifully sends to
those who have learned submission to suffering, to those
whose strength is the strength, not of resistance, but of
endurance, she felt that as long as she sat there, relaxed
and motionless, she had in a way withdrawn herself from
the struggle to live. If she might only stay like this forever,
without moving, without thinking, without feeling, while she
died slowly, inch by inch, spirit and body.

A knock came at the door, and as she moved to answer
it, she felt that life returned in a slow throbbing agony, as if
her blood were forced back again into veins from which it
had ebbed. When the tray was placed on the table beside
her, she looked up with a mild, impersonal curiosity at the
waiter, as the dead might look back from their freedom and
detachment on the unreal figures of the living. "I wonder
what he thinks about it all?" she thought vaguely, as she
searched in her bag for his tip. "I wonder if he sees how
absurd and unnecessary all the things are that he does day
after day, year after year, like the rest of us? I wonder if he
ever revolts with this unspeakable weariness from waiting
on other people and watching them eat?" But the waiter,
with his long sallow face, his inscrutable eyes, and his
general air of having petrified under the surface, was as
enigmatical as life.

After he had gone out, she rose from her untasted
luncheon, and going into her bedroom, took the black
brocaded gown off the hanger and stuffed the sleeves with
tissue paper as carefully as if the world had not crumbled
around her. Then she packed away her wrapper and her
bedroom slippers and shook out and folded the dresses
she had not worn. For a time she worked on mechanically,
hardly conscious of what she was doing, hardly conscious
even that she was alive. Then slowly, softly, like a gentle
rain, her tears fell into the trunk, on each separate garment
as she smoothed it and laid it away.

At half-past eight o'clock she was waiting with her hat
and coat on when Oliver came in, followed by the porter
who was to take down her bags. She knew that he had
brought the man in order to avoid all possibility of an
emotional scene; and she could have smiled, had her spirit
been less wan and stricken, at this sign of a moral
cowardice which was so characteristic. It was his way, she
understood now, though she did not put the thought into
words, to take what he wanted, escaping at the same time
the price which nature exacts of those who have not
learned to relinquish. Out of the strange colourless stillness
which surrounded her, some old words of Susan's floated
back to her as if they were spoken aloud: "A Treadwell will
always get the thing he wants most in the end." But while he
stabbed her, he would look away in order that he might
be spared the memory of her face.

Without a word, she followed her bags from the room
without a word she entered the elevator, which was
waiting, and without a word she took her place in

the taxicab standing beside the curbstone. There was no
rebellion in her thoughts, merely a dulled consciousness of
pain, like the consciousness of one who is partially under
an anæsthetic. The fighting courage, the violence of revolt,
had no part in her soul, which had been taught to suffer and
to renounce with dignity, not with heroics. Her submission
was the submission of a flower that bends to a storm.

As she sat there in silence, with her eyes on the brilliant
street, where the signs of his play stared back at her under
the flaring lights, she began to think with automatic
precision, as though her brain were moved by some
mechanical power over which she had no control. Little
things crowded into her mind - the face of the doll she had
bought for Lucy's stepchild that morning, the words on one
of the electric signs on the top of a building they were
passing, the leopard skin coat worn by a woman on the
pavement. And these little things seemed to her at the
moment to be more real, more vital, than her broken heart
and the knowledge that she was parting from Oliver. The
agony of the night and the morning appeared to have
passed away like a physical pang, leaving only this
deadness of sensation and the strange, almost unearthly
clearness of external objects. "It is not new. It has been coming
on for years," she thought. "He said that, and it is true.
It is so old that it has been here forever, and I seem to have
been suffering it all my life - since the day I was born,
and before the day I was born. It seems older than I am.
Oliver is going from me. He has always been going from me
- always since the beginning," she repeated slowly, as if
she were trying to learn a lesson

by heart. But so remote and shadowy did the words
appear, that she found herself thinking the next instant, "I
must have forgotten my smelling-salts. The bottle was lying
on the bureau, and I can't remember putting it into my
bag." The image of this little glass bottle, with the gold top,
which she had left behind was distinct in her memory; but
when she tried to think of the parting from Oliver and of all
that she was suffering, everything became shadowy and
unreal again.

At the station she stood beside the porter while he paid
the driver, and then entering the doorway, they walked
hurriedly, so hurriedly that she felt as if she were losing her
breath, in the direction of the gate and the waiting train.
And with each step, as they passed down the long
platform, which seemed to stretch into eternity, she was
thinking: "In a minute it will be over. If I don't say something
now, it will be too late. If I don't stop him now, it will be
over forever - everything will be over forever."

Beside the night coach, in the presence of the conductor
and the porter, who stood blandly waiting to help her into
the train, she stopped suddenly, as though she could not go
any farther, as though the strength which had supported her
until now had given way and she were going to fall.
Through her mind there flashed the thought that even now
she might hold him if she were to make a scene, that if she
were to go into hysterics he would not leave her, that if she
were to throw away her pride and her self-respect and her
dignity, she might recover by violence the outer shell at
least of her happiness. How could he break away from her
if she were only to weep and

to cling to him? Then, while the idea was still in her mind,
she knew that to a nature such as hers violence was
impossible. It took passion to war with passion, and in this
she was lacking. Though she were wounded to the death,
she could not revolt, could not shriek out in her agony,
could not break through that gentle yet invincible reticence
which she had won from the past.

Down the long platform a child came running with cries
of pleasure, followed by a man with a red beard, who
carried a suitcase. As they approached the train, Virginia
entered the coach, and walked rapidly down the aisle to
where the porter was waiting beside her seat.

For the first time since they had reached the station
Oliver spoke. "I am sorry I couldn't get the drawing-room
for you," he said. "I am afraid you will be crowded"; and
this anxiety about her comfort, when he was ruining her life,
did not strike either of them, at the moment, as ridiculous.

"It does not matter," she answered; and he put out his
hand.

"Good-bye, Virginia," he said, with a catch in his voice.

"Good-bye," she responded quietly, and would have
given her soul for the power to shriek aloud, to overcome
this indomitable instinct which was stronger than her
personal self.

Turning away, he passed between the seats to the door
of the coach, and a minute later she saw his figure hurrying
back along the platform down which they had come
together a few minutes ago.

CHAPTER VI
THE FUTURE
A CHILL rain was falling when Virginia got out of the train
the next morning, and the raw-boned nags hitched to the
ancient "hacks" in the street appeared even more dejected
and forlorn than she had remembered them. Then one of
the noisy negro drivers seized her bag, and a little later she
was rolling up the long hill in the direction of her home.
Dinwiddie was the same; nothing had altered there since
she had left it - and yet what a difference! The same shops
were unclosing their shutters; the same crippled negro
beggar was taking his place at the corner of the market; the
same maids were sweeping the sidewalks with the same
brooms; the same clerk bowed to her from the drug store
where she bought her medicines; and yet something - the
only thing which had ever interested her in these people
and this place - had passed out of them. Just as in New
York yesterday, when she had watched the sunrise, so it
seemed to her now that the spirit of reality had faded out of
the world. What remained was merely a mirage in which
phantoms in the guise of persons made a presence of being
alive.

The front door of her house stood open, and on the
porch one of the coloured maids was beating the dust out
of the straw mat. "As if dust makes any

difference when one is dead," Virginia thought wearily; and
an unutterable loathing passed over her for all the little acts
by which one rendered tribute to the tyranny of
appearances. Then, as she entered the house, she felt that
the sight of the familiar objects she had once loved
oppressed her as though the spirit of melancholy resided in
the pieces of furniture, not in her soul. This weariness, so
much worse than positive pain, filled her with disgust for all
the associations and the sentiments she had known in the
past. Not only the house and the furniture and the small
details of housekeeping, but the street and the town and
every friendly face of a neighbour, had become an
intolerable reminder that she was still alive.

In her room, where a bright fire was burning, and letters
from the girls lay on the table, she sat down in her wraps
and gazed with unseeing eyes at the flames. "The children
must not know. I must keep it from the children as long as
possible," she thought dully, and it was so natural to her to
plan sparing them, that for a minute the idea took her mind
away from her own anguish. "If I could only die like this,
then they need never know," she found herself reflecting
coldly a little later, so coldly that she seemed to have no
personal interest, no will to choose in the matter. "If I could
only die like this, nobody need be hurt - except Harry,"
she added.

For the first time, with the thought of Harry, her restraint
suddenly failed her. "Yes, it would hurt Harry. I must live
because Harry would want me to," she said aloud; and as
though her strength were reinforced by the words,
she rose and prepared herself to go downstairs to
breakfast - prepared herself, too,

for the innumerable little agonies which would come with
the day, for the sight of Susan, for the visits from the
neighbours, for the eager questions about the fashions in
New York which Miss Willy would ask. And all the time
she was thinking clearly, "It can't last forever. It must end
some time. Who knows but it may stop the next minute,
and one can stand a minute of anything."

The day passed, the week, the month, and gradually the
spring came and went, awakening life in the trees, in the
grass, in the fields, but not in her heart. Even the dried
sticks in the yard put out shoots of living green and
presently bore blossoms, and in the borders by the front
gate, the crocuses, which she had planted with her own
hands a year ago, were ablaze with gold. All nature
seemed joining in the resurrection of life, all nature, except
herself, seemed to flower again to fulfilment. She alone was
dead, and she alone among the dead must keep up this
presence of living which was so much harder than death.

Once every week she wrote to the children, restrained
yet gently flowing letters in which there was no mention of
Oliver. It had been so long, indeed, since either Harry or
the girls had associated their parents together that the
omission called forth no question, hardly, she gathered, any
surprise. Their lives were so full, their interests were so
varied, that, except at the regular intervals when they sat
down to write to her, it is doubtful if they ever seriously
wondered about her. In July, Jenny came home for a
month, and Lucy wrote regretfully that she was "so
disappointed that she couldn't join mother somewhere in
the mountains"; but beyond this, the girls' lives

hardly appeared to touch hers even on the surface. In the
month that Jenny spent in Dinwiddie, she organized a
number of societies and clubs for the improvement of
conditions among working girls, and in spite of the intense
heat (the hottest spell of the summer came while she was
there), she barely allowed herself a minute for rest or for
conversation with her mother.

"If you would only go to the mountains, mother," she
remarked the evening before she left. "I am sure it isn't
good for you to stay in Dinwiddie during the summer."

"I am used to it," replied Virginia a little stubbornly, for it
seemed to her at the moment that she would rather die than
move.

"But you ought to think of your health. What does father
say about it?"

A contraction of pain crossed Virginia's face, but Jenny,
whose vision was so wide that it had a way of overlooking
things which were close at hand, did not observe it.

"He hasn't said anything," she answered, with a strange
stillness of voice.

"I thought he meant to take you to England, but I
suppose his plays are keeping him in New York."

Rising from her chair at the table - they had just finished
supper - Virginia reached for a saucer and filled it with ice
cream from a bowl in front of her.

"I think I'll send Miss Priscilla a little of this cream," she
remarked. "She is so fond of strawberry."

The next day Jenny went, and again the silence and the
loneliness settled upon the house, to which Virginia clung
with a morbid terror of change. Had

her spirit been less broken, she might have made the effort
of going North as Jenny had urged her to do, but when her
life was over, one place seemed as desirable as another,
and it was a matter of profound indifference to her whether
it was heat or cold which afflicted her body. She was
probably the only person in Dinwiddie who did not hang out
of her window during the long nights in search of a passing
breeze. But with that physical insensibility which
accompanies prolonged torture of soul, she had ceased to
feel the heat, had ceased even to feel the old neuralgic pain
in her temples. There were times when it seemed to her that
if a pin were stuck into her body she should not know it.
The one thing she asked - and this Life granted her except
during the four weeks of Jenny's visit - was freedom from
the need of exertion, freedom from the obligation to make
decisions. Her housekeeping she left now to the servants,
so she was spared the daily harassing choices of the market
and the table. There remained nothing for her to do, nothing
even for her to worry about, except her broken heart. Her
friends she had avoided ever since her return from New
York, partly from an unbearable shrinking from the
questions which she knew they would ask whenever they
met her, partly because her mind was so engrossed with the
supreme fact that her universe lay in ruins, that she found it
impossible to lend a casual interest to other matters. She,
who had effaced herself for a lifetime, found suddenly that
she could not see beyond the immediate presence of her
own suffering.

Usually she stayed closely indoors through the summer
days, but several times, at the hour of dusk,

she went out alone and wandered for hours about the
streets which were associated with her girlhood. In High
Street, at the corner where she had first seen Oliver, she
stood one evening until Miss Priscilla who had caught sight
of her from the porch of the Academy (which, owing to the
changing fashions in education and the infirmities of the
teacher, was the Academy no longer), sent out her negro
maid to beg her to come in and sit with her. "No, I'm only
looking for something," Virginia had answered, while she
hurried back past the church and down the slanting street to
the twelve stone steps which led up the terraced hillside at
the rectory. Here, in the purple summer twilight, spangled
with fireflies, she felt for a minute that her youth was
awaiting her; and opening the gate, she passed as softly as
a ghost along the crooked path to the two great
paulownias, which were beginning to decay, and to the
honeysuckle arbour, where the tendrils of the creeper
brushed her hair like a caress. Under the light of a young
moon, it seemed to her that nothing had changed since that
spring evening when she had stood there and felt the
wonder of first love awake in her heart. Nothing had
changed except that love and herself. The paulownias still
shed their mysterious shadows about her, the red and white
roses still bloomed by the west wing of the house, the bed
of mint still grew, rank and fragrant, beneath the dining-room
window. When she put her hand on the bole of the
tree beside which she stood, she could still feel the initials
V. O. which Oliver had cut there in the days before their
marriage. A light burned in the window of the room which
had been the parlour in the days when she lived there, and
as she

gazed at it, she almost expected to see the face of her mother,
with its look of pathetic cheerfulness, smiling at her through the
small greenish panes. And then the past in which Oliver had no
part, the past which belonged to her and to her parents, that
hallowed, unforgettable past of her childhood, which seemed
bathed in love as in a flood of light - this past enveloped her
as the magic of the moonbeams enveloped the house in which she
had lived. While she stood there, it was more living than the
present, more real than the aching misery in her heart.

The door of the house opened and shut; she heard a
step on the gravelled path; and bending forward out of the
shadow, she waited breathlessly for the sound of her
father's voice. But it was a young rector, who had recently
accepted the call to Saint James' Church and his boyish
face, rising out of the sacred past awoke her with a shock
from the dream into which she had fallen.

"Good-evening, Mrs. Treadwell. Were you coming to
see me? he asked eagerly, pleased, she could see, by the
idea that she was seeking his services.

"No, I was passing, and the garden reminded me so of
my girlhood that I came in for a minute."

she says, while they are blooming, it is impossible to keep
the yard clean."

"I remember. Their flowers cover everything when
they fall, but I always loved them."

"Well, one does get attached to things. I hope you have
had a pleasant summer in spite of the heat. It must have
been a delight to have your daughter at home again. What
a splendid worker she is. If we had her in Dinwiddie for
good it wouldn't be long before the old town would
awaken. Why, I'd been trying to get those girls' clubs
started for a year, and she took the job out of my hands
and managed it in two weeks."

"The dear child is very clever. Is your wife still in the
mountains?"

"She's coming back next week. We didn't feel that it
was safe to bring the baby home until that long spell of
heat had broken." Then, as she turned towards the step,
he added hastily, "Won't you let me walk with you?"

But this, she felt, was more than she could bear, and
making the excuse of an errand on the next block, she
parted from him at the gate, and hurried like a shadow
back along High Street.

Until October there was no word from Oliver, and then
at last there came a letter, which she threw, half read, into
the fire. The impulsive act, so unlike the normal Virginia,
soothed her for an instant, and she said over and over to
herself, while she moved hurriedly about the room, as
though she were seeking an escape from the moment
before her, "I'm glad I didn't finish it. I'm glad I let it burn."
Though she did not realize it, this passionate refusal to look
at

or to touch the thing that she hated was the last stand
of the Pendleton idealism against the triumph of the
actuality. It is possible that until that moment
she had felt far down in her soul that by declining to
acknowledge in words the fact of Oliver's desertion,
by hiding it from the children, by ignoring the
processes which would lead to his freedom, she had, in
some obscure way, deprived that fact of all power over
her life. But now while his letter, blaming himself
and yet pleading with her for his liberty, lay there,
crumbling slowly to ashes, under her eyes, her whole
life, with its pathos, its subterfuge, its losing battle
against the ruling spirit of change, seemed crumbling
there also, like those ashes, or like that vanished past
to which she belonged. "I'm glad I let it burn," she
repeated bitterly, and yet she knew that the words
had never really burned, that the flame which was
consuming them would never die until she lay in her
coffin. Stopping in front of the fire, she stood looking
down on the last shred of the letter, as though it were
in reality the ruins of her life which she was watching.
A dull wonder stirred in her mind amid her suffering -
a vague questioning as to why this thing, of all things,
should have happened? "If I could only know why
it was - if I could only understand, it might be
easier," she thought. "But I tried so hard to do what
was right, and, whatever the fault was, at least I
never failed in love. I never failed in love," she
repeated. Her gaze, leaving the fire, rested for an
instant on a little alabaster ash-tray which stood on
the end of the table, and a spasm crossed her face,
which had remained unmoved while she was reading
his letter. Every object in the room seemed suddenly

alive with memories. That was his place on the rug; the
deep chintz-covered chair by the hearth was the one in
which he used to sit, watching the fire at night, before
going to bed; the clock on the mantel was the one he had
selected; the rug, which was threadbare in places, he had
helped her to choose; the pile of English reviews on the
table he had subscribed to; the little glass water bottle on
the candle-stand by the bed, she had bought years ago
because he liked to drink in the night. There was nothing in
which he did not have a part. Every trivial incident of her life
was bound up with the thought of him. She could no more
escape the torment of these associations than she could
escape the fact of herself. For so long she had been one
with him in her thoughts that their relationship had passed,
for her, into that profound union of habit which is the
strongest union of all. Even the years in which he had grown
gradually away from her had appeared to her to leave
untouched the deeper sanctities of their marriage.

A knock came at the door, and the cook, with a list of
groceries in her hand, entered to inquire if her mistress
were going to market. With the beginning of the autumn
Virginia had tried to take an interest in her housekeeping
again, and the daily trip to the market had relieved, in a
measure, the terrible vacancy of her mornings. Now it
seemed to her that the remorseless exactions of the material
details of living offered the only escape from the tortures of
memory. "Yes, I'll go," she said, reaching out her hand for
the list, and her heart cried, "I cannot live if I stay in this
room any longer. I cannot live if I look at these things."
As she turned away to put on her hat, she

was seized by a superstitious feeling that she might escape her
suffering by fleeing from these inanimate reminders of her
marriage. It was as though the chair and the rug and the clock
had become possessed with some demoniacal spirit. "If I can
only get out of doors I shall feel better," she insisted; and when
she had hurriedly pinned on her hat and tied her tulle ruff at her
throat, she caught up her gloves and ran quickly down the
stairs and out into the street. But as soon as she had reached
the sidewalk, the agony, which she had thought she was leaving
behind her in the closed room upstairs, rushed over her in a
wave of realization, and turning again, she started back into the
yard, and stopped, with a sensation of panic, beside the bed of
crimson dahlias at the foot of the steps. Then, while she
hesitated, uncertain whether to return to her bedroom or to
force herself to go on to the market, those hated familiar
objects flashed in a blaze of light through her mind, and,
opening the gate, she passed out on the sidewalk, and started
at a rapid step down the deserted pavement of Sycamore
Street. "At least nobody will speak to me," she thought; but
while the words were still on her lips, she saw a door in the
block open wide, and one of her neighbours come out on his
way to his business. Turning hastily, she fled into a cross street,
and then gathering courage, went on, trembling in every limb,
towards the old market, which she used because her mother
and her grandmother had used it before her.

The fish-carts were still there just as they had been when
she was a girl, but the army of black-robed housekeepers
had changed or melted away. Here, also, the physical
details of life had survived the beings

for whose use or comfort they had come into existence. The
meat and the vegetable stalls were standing in orderly rows
about the octagonal building; wilted cabbage leaves littered
the dusty floor; flies swarmed around the bleeding forms
hanging from hooks in the sunshine; even Mr. Dewlap, hale
and red-cheeked, offered her white pullets out of the
wooden coop at his feet. So little had the physical scene
changed since the morning, more than twenty-five years
ago, of her meeting with Oliver, that while she paused there
beside Mr. Dewlap's stall, one of the older generation
might have mistaken her for her mother.

"My dear Virginia," said a voice at her back, and,
turning, she found Mrs. Peachey, a trifle rheumatic, but still
plump and pretty. "I'm so glad you come to the old market,
my child. I suppose you cling to it because of your mother,
and then things are really so much dearer uptown, don't
you think so?"

"Yes, I dare say they are, but I've got into the habit of
coming here."

"One does get into habits. Now I've bought chickens
from Mr. Dewlap for forty years. I remember your mother
and I used to say that there were no chickens to compare
with his white pullets."

"I remember. Mother was a wonderful housekeeper."

"And you are too, my dear. Everybody says that you
have the best table in Dinwiddie!" Her small rosy face,
framed in the shirred brim of her black silk bonnet, was
wrinkled with age, but even her wrinkles were cheerful
ones, and detracted nothing from the charming archness of
her expression. Unconquerable still, she went her sprightly
way, on rheumatic limbs, towards the grave.

"Have you seen dear Miss Priscilla?" asked Virginia,
striving to turn the conversation away from
herself, and shivering with terror lest the other should
ask after Oliver, whom she had always adored.

"I stopped to inquire about her on my way down. She
had had a bad night, the maid said, and Doctor Fraser is
afraid that the cold she got when she went driving the other
day has settled upon her lungs."

"Oh, I am so sorry!" exclaimed Virginia, but she was
conscious of an immeasurable relief because Miss
Priscilla's illness was absorbing Mrs. Peachey's thoughts.

"Well, I must be going on," said the little lady, and
though she flinched with pain when she moved, the habitual
cheerfulness of her face did not alter. "Come to see me as
often as you can, Jinny. I can't get about much now, and
it is such a pleasure for me to have somebody to chat with.
People don't visit now," she added regretfully, "as much as
they used to."

"So many things have changed," said Virginia, and her
eyes, as she gazed up at the blue sky over the market, had
a yearning look in them. So many things had changed - ah,
there was the pang!

On her way home, overcome by the fear that Miss
Priscilla might die thinking herself neglected, Virginia
stopped at the Academy, and was shown into the chamber
behind the parlour, which had once been a classroom. In
the middle of her big tester bed, the teacher was lying,
propped among pillows, with her cameo brooch fastening
the collar of her nightgown and a purple wool shawl, which
Virginia had knit for her, thrown over her shoulders.

"Dear Miss Priscilla, I've thought of you so often. Are
you better to-day?"

"A little, Jinny, but don't worry about me. I'll be out of
bed in a day or two." Though she was well over eighty-five,
she still thought of herself as a middle-aged woman, and
her constant plans for the future amazed Virginia, whose
hold upon life was so much slighter, so much less tenacious.
"Have you been to market, dear? I miss so being able to sit
by the window and watch people go by. Then I always
knew when you and Susan were on your way to Mr.
Dewlap."

"Yes, I've begun to go again. It fills in the day."

"I never approved of your letting your servants market
for you, Jinny. It would have shocked your mother
dreadfully."

"I know," said Virginia, and her voice, in spite of her
effort to speak cheerfully, had a weary sound, which made
her add with sudden energy, "I've brought you a partridge.
Mr. Dewlap had such nice ones. You must try to eat it for
supper."

"How like you that was, Jinny. You are your mother all
over again. I declare I am reminded of her more and more
every time that I see you."

"And what about Harry? I've always believed that Harry
was your favourite, Jinny."

For an instant Virginia hesitated, with her eyes on the pot
of red geraniums blooming between the white muslin
curtains at the window. In his little cage in the sunlight, Miss
Priscilla's canary, the last of many generations of Dickys,
burst suddenly into song.

"I believe that Harry loves me more than anybody else in
the world does," she answered at last. "He'd come to me
to-morrow if he thought I needed him."

Lying there in her great white bed, with her enormous
body, which she could no longer turn, rising in a mountain
of flesh under the linen sheet, the old teacher closed her
eyes lest Virginia should see her soul yearning over her as it
had yearned over Lucy Pendleton after the rector's death.
She thought of the girl, with the flower-like eyes and the
braided wreath of hair, flitting in white organdie and blue
ribbons, under the dappled sunlight in High Street, and she
said to herself, as she had said twenty-five years ago, "If
there was ever a girl who looked as if she were cut out for
happiness, it was Jinny Pendleton."

"They say that Abby Goode is going to be married at
last," remarked Virginia abruptly, for she knew that such
bits of gossip supplied the only pleasant excitement in Miss
Priscilla's life.

"Well, it's time. She waited long enough," returned the
teacher, and she added, "I always knew that she was
crazy about Oliver by the way she flung herself at his
head." She had never liked Abby, and her

prejudices, which had survived the shocks of life, were
not weakened by the approaching presence of Death. It
was characteristic of her that she should pass into eternity
with both her love and her scorn undiminished.

"She was a little boisterous as a girl, but I never believed
any harm of her," answered Virginia mildly; and then as
Miss Priscilla's lunch was brought in on a tray, she kissed
her tenderly, with a curious feeling that it was for the last
time, and went out of the door and down the gravelled
walk into High Street. An exhaustion greater than any she
had ever known oppressed her as she dragged her body,
which felt dead, through the glorious October weather.
Once, when she passed Saint James' Church, she thought
wearily, "How sorry mother would be if she knew," while
an intolerable pain, which seemed her mother's pain as well
as her own, pierced her heart. Then, as she hurried on, with
that nervous haste which she could no longer control, the
terrible haunted blocks appeared to throng with the faded
ghosts of her youth. A gray-haired woman leaning out of
the upper window of an old house nodded to her with a
smile, and she found herself thinking, "I rolled hoops with
her once in the street, and now she is watching her
grandchild go out in its carriage." At any other moment she
would have bent, enraptured, over the perambulator, which
was being wheeled, by a nurse and a maid, down the front
steps into the street; but to-day the sight of the soft baby
features, lovingly surrounded by lace and blue ribbons, was
like the turn of a knife in her wound. "And yet mother
always said that she was never so happy as she was with
my children," she reflected, while her personal suffering was
eased for a

minute by the knowledge of what her return to Dinwiddie
had meant to her mother. "If she had died while I lived
away, I could never have got over it - I could never have
forgiven myself," she added, and there was an exquisite
relief in turning even for an instant away from the thought of
herself.

When she reached home luncheon was awaiting her; but
after sitting down at the table and unfolding her napkin, a
sudden nausea seized her, and she felt that it was impossible
to sit there facing the mahogany sideboard, with its gleaming
rows of silver, and watch the precise, slow-footed
movements of the maid, who served her as she might have
served a wooden image. "I took such trouble to train her,
and now it makes me sick to look at her," she thought, as
she pushed back her chair and fled hastily from the room
into Oliver's study across the hall. Here her work-bag lay
on the table, and taking it up, she sat down before the fire,
and spread out the centrepiece, which she was
embroidering, in an intricate and elaborate design, for
Lucy's Christmas. It was almost a year now since she had
started it, and into the luxuriant sprays and garlands there
had passed something of the restless love and yearning
which had overflowed from her heart. Usually she was able
to work on it in spite of her suffering, for she was one of
those whose hands could accomplish mechanically tasks
from which her soul had revolted; but to-day even her
obedient fingers faltered and refused to keep at their labour.
Her eyes, leaving the needle she held, wandered beyond the
window to the branches of the young maple tree, which
rose, like a pointed flame, toward the cloudless blue of the
sky.

in her hand, and a passionate sympathy in her face,
Virginia was still sitting there, gazing at the dim outline of
the tree and the strip of sky which had faded from azure to
grey.

"Oh, Jinny, my darling, you never told me!"

Taking up the piece of embroidery from her lap,
Virginia met her friend's tearful caress with a frigid and
distant manner. "There was nothing to tell. What do you
mean?" she asked.

"Is - is it true that Oliver has left you? That - that
- " Susan's voice broke, strangled by emotion, but
Virginia, without looking up from the rose on which she
was working in the firelight, answered quietly:

"Yes, it is true. He wants to be free."

"But you will not do it, darling? The law is on your side."

With her eyes on the needle which she held carefully
poised for the next stitch, Virginia hesitated while the
muscles of her face quivered for an instant and then
grew rigid again.

"What good would it do," she asked, "to hold him to me
when he wishes to be free?" And then, with one of those
flashes of insight which came to her in moments of great
emotional stress, she added quitely, "It is not the law, it is
life."

Putting her arms around her, Susan pressed her to her
bosom as she might have pressed a suffering child whom
she was powerless to help or even to make understand.

"Jinny, Jinny, let me love you," she begged.

"How did you know?" asked Virginia, as coldly as
though she had not heard her. "Has it got into the
papers?"

For an instant Susan's pity struggled against her loyalty.
"General Goode told me that there had been a good deal about
Oliver and - and Miss Oldcastle in the New York papers for
several days," she answered, "and this morning a few lines
were copied in the Dinwiddie Bee. Oliver is so famous it
was impossible to keep things hushed up, I suppose. But
you knew all this, Jinny darling."

"Oh, yes, I knew that," answered Virginia; then, rising
suddenly from her chair, she said almost irritably:
"Susan, I want to be alone. I can't think until I am alone."
By her look Susan knew that until that minute some blind
hope had kept alive in her, some childish presence that it
might all be a dream, some passionate evasion of the
ultimate outcome.

"If you want to, you may come. But I don't need you. I
don't need anybody. I don't need anybody," she repeated
bitterly; and this bitterness appeared to change not only her
expression, but her features and her carriage and that
essential attribute of her being which had been the real
Virginia.

Awed in spite of herself, Susan put on her hat again,
and bent over to kiss her. "I'll be back before bedtime Jinny.
Don't shut me away, dear. Let me share your pain with you."

At this something that was like a smile trembled for an
instant on Virginia's face.

"You are good, Susan," she responded, but there was no
tenderness, no gratitude even, in her voice. She had grown
hard with the implacable hardness of grief.

When the door had closed behind her friend, she stood
looking through the window until she saw her pass slowly,
as though she were reluctant to go, down Sycamore Street
in the direction of her home. "I am glad she has gone," she
thought coldly. "Susan is good, but I am glad she has gone."
Then, turning back to the fire, she took up the piece of
embroidery and mechanically folded it before she laid it
away. While her hands were still on the bag in which she
kept it, a shiver went through her body, and a look of
resolution passed over her features, making them appear as
if they were sculptured in marble.

"He will be sorry some day," she thought. "He will be
sorry when it is too late, and if I were there now - if I
were to see him, it might all be prevented. It might all be
prevented and we might be happy again." In her distorted
mind, which worked with the quickness and the intensity of
delirium, this idea assumed presently the prominence and
the force of an hallucination. So powerful did it become that
it triumphed over all the qualities which had once
constituted her character - over the patience, the
sweetness, the unselfish goodness - as easily as it obscured
the rashness and folly of the step which she planned. "If I
could see him, it might all be prevented," she repeated
obstinately, as though some one had opposed her; and,
going upstairs to her bedroom, she packed her little
handbag and put on the travelling dress which she had worn
in New York. Then, very softly, as though she feared to be
stopped by the servants, she went down the stairs and out
of the front door; and, very softly, carrying her bag, she
passed into the

street and walked hurriedly in the direction of the
station. And all the way she was thinking, "If I
can only see him again, this may not happen and
everything may be as it was before when he still
loved me." So just and rational did this idea appear
to her, that she found herself wondering passionately
why she had not thought of it before. It was so easy
a way out of her wretchedness that it seemed absurd
of her to have overlooked it. And this discovery
filled her with such tremulous excitement, that when she
opened her purse to buy her ticket, her hands shook
as if they were palsied, and the porter, who held her
bag, was obliged to count out the money. The whole
of life, which had looked so dark an hour ago, had
become suddenly illuminated.

Once in the train, her nervousness left her, and when an
acquaintance joined her after they had started, she was
able to talk connectedly of trivial occurrences in Dinwiddie.
He was a fat, apoplectic looking man, with a bald head
which shone like satin, and a drooping moustache slightly
discoloured by tobacco. His appearance, which she had never
objected to before, seemed to her grotesque; but in spite of
this, she could smile almost naturally at his jokes
which she thought inconceivably stupid.

"I suppose you heard about Cyrus Treadwell's
accident," he said at last when she rose to go to her berth.
"Got knocked down by an automobile as he was getting off
a street car at the bank. It isn't serious, they say, but he
was pretty well stunned for a while."

said good-night and disappeared behind the curtains of her
berth, where she lay, without undressing, until morning.

"This is the way - there is no other way to stop it," she
thought, and all night the rumble of the train and the flashing
of the lights in the darkness outside of her window kept up
a running accompaniment to the words. "It is a sin - and
there is no other way to stop it. He is committing a sin, and
when I see him he will understand it, and it will be as it was
before." This idea, which was as fixed as an obsession of
delirium, seemed to occupy some central space in her
brain, leaving room for a crowd of lesser thoughts which
came and went fantastically around it like the motley throng
of a circus. She thought of Cyrus Treadwell's accident, of
the stupid jokes the man from Dinwiddie had told her, of
the noises of the train, which would not let one sleep, of the
stations which blazed out, here and there, in the darkness.
But in the midst of this confusion of images and
impressions, a clear voice was repeating somewhere in her
brain: "This is the way - there is no other way to stop it
before it is too late."

In the morning, when she got out in New York, and gave
the driver the name of the little hotel at which she had
stopped on her first visit, this glowing certainty faded like
the excitement of fever from her mind, and she relapsed
into the stricken hopelessness of the last six months. The
bleakness of her spirits fell like a cloud on the brilliant
October day, and the sunshine, which lay in golden pools
on the pavements, appeared to increase the sense of
universal melancholy which had followed so sharply on the
brief exaltation

of the night. "I must see him - it is the only way," her brain
still repeated, but the ring of conviction was gone from the
words. Her flight from Dinwiddie showed to her now in all
the desperate folly with which it might have appeared to a
stranger. The impulse which had brought her had ebbed
away, and with the impulse had passed also the confidence
and the energy of her resolve.

At the hotel, where the red bedroom into which they
ushered her appeared to have waited unaltered for the
second tragedy of her life, she bathed and dressed herself,
and after a cup of black coffee, taken because a sensation
of dizziness had alarmed her lest she should faint in the
street, she put on her hat again and went out into Fifth
Avenue. She remembered the name of the hotel at the head
of Oliver's letter, and she directed her steps towards it now
with an automatic precision of which her mind seemed
almost unconscious. All thought of asking for him had
vanished, yet she was drawn to the place where he was by
a force which was more irresistible than any choice of the
will. An instinct stronger than reason was guiding her steps.

In Fifth Avenue the crowd was already beginning to
stream by on the sidewalks, and as she mingled with it, she
recalled that other morning when she had moved among
these people and had felt that they looked at her kindly
because she was beautiful and young. Now the kindness
had given way to indifference in their eyes. They no longer
looked at her; and when a shop window, which she was
passing, showed her a reflection of herself, she saw only a
commonplace middle-aged figure, with a look of withered

sweetness in the face, which had grown suddenly wan.
And the sight of this figure fell like a weight on her heart,
destroying the last vestige of courage.

Before the door of the hotel in which Oliver was staying,
she stood so long, with her vacant gaze fixed on the green
velvet carpet within the hall, that an attendant in livery came
up at last and inquired if she wished to see any one.
Arousing herself with a start, she shook her head hurriedly
and turned back into the street, for when the crucial
moment came her decision failed her. Just as she had been
unable to make a scene on the night when they had parted,
so now it was impossible for her to descend to the
vulgarity of thrusting her presence into his life. Unless the
frenzy of delirium seized her again, she knew that she
should never have the strength to put the desperation of
thought into the desperation of action. What she longed for
was not to fight, not to struggle, but to fall, like a wounded
bird, to the earth, and be forgotten.

At the crossing, where there was a crush of motor cars
and carriages, she stopped for a moment and thought how
easy it would be to die in the crowded street before
returning to Dinwiddie. "All I need do is to slip and fall
there, and in a second it would be over." But so many cars
went by that she knew she should never be able to do it,
that much as she hated life, something bound her to it which
she lacked the courage to break. There shot through her
mind the memory of a soldier her father used to tell about,
who was always first on the field of battle, but had never
found the courage to charge. "He was like

me - for I might stand here forever and yet not
forever and yet not find the courage to die."

A beggar came up to her and she thought, "He is begging
of me, and yet I am more miserable than he is." Then, while
she searched in her bag for some change, it seemed to her
that the faces gliding past her became suddenly distorted
and twisted as though the souls of the women in the rapidly
moving cars were crucified under their splendid furs. "That
woman in the sable cloak is beautiful, and yet she, also, is in
torture," she reflected with an impersonal coldness and
detachment. "I was beautiful, too, but how did it help me?"
And she saw herself as she had been in her girlhood with
the glow of happiness, as of one flying, in her face, and her
heart filled with the joyous expectancy of the miracle which
must happen. "I am as old now as Miss Willy was then
- and how I pitied her!" Tears rushed to her eyes, which
had been so dry a minute before, while the memory of that
lost gaiety of youth came over her in a wave that was like
the sweetness of the honeysuckle blooming in the rectory
garden.

A policeman, observing that she had waited there so
long, held up the traffic until she had crossed the street, and
after thanking him, she went on again towards the hotel in
which she was staying. "He was kind about helping me
over," she said to herself, with an impulse of gratitude; and
this casual kindness seemed to her the one spot of light in
the blackness which surrounded her.

As she approached the hotel, her step flagged, and she
felt suddenly that even that passive courage which was
hers - the courage of endurance - had

deserted her. She saw the dreadful hours that must ensue
before she went back to Dinwiddie, the dreadful days that
would follow after she got there, the dreadful weeks that
would run on into the dreadful years. Silent, grey, and
endless, they stretched ahead of her, and through them all
she saw herself, a little hopeless figure, moving towards that
death which she had not had the courage to die. The
thoughts of the familiar streets, of the familiar faces, of the
house, of the furniture, of the leaf-strewn yard in which her
bed of dahlias was blooming - all these aroused in her the
sense of spiritual nausea which she had felt when she went
back to them after her parting from Oliver. Nothing
remained except the long empty years, for she had outlived
her usefulness.

At the door of the hotel, the hall porter met her with a
cheerful face, and she turned to him with the instinctive
reliance on masculine protection which had driven her to
the friendly shelter of the policeman at the crossing in Fifth
Avenue. In reply to her helpless questions, he looked up
the next train to Dinwiddie, which left within the hour, and
after buying her ticket, assisted her smilingly into the
taxicab. While she sat there, in the middle of the seat, with
her little black bag rocking back and forth as the cab turned
the corners, all capacity for feeling, all possibility of
sensation even, seemed to have passed out of her body,
The impulse which was carrying her to Dinwiddie was the
physical impulse which drives a wounded animal back to
die in its shelter. Even the flaring advertisements of Oliver's
play, which was still running in a Broadway theatre,
aroused no pain, hardly any thought of him or of the past, in
her mind. She

had ceased to suffer, she had ceased even to think; and
when, a little later, she followed the station porter down the
long platform, she was able to brush aside the memory of
her parting from Oliver as lightly as though it were the trivial
sting of a wasp. When she remembered the agony of the
last year of yesterday, of the morning through which she
had just lived, it appeared almost ridiculous. That death
which she had lacked the courage to die seemed creeping
over her soul before it reached the outer shell of her body.

In the train, she was attacked by a sensation of faintness,
and remembering that she had eaten nothing all day, she
went into the dining-car, and sat down at one of the little
tables. When her luncheon was brought, she ate almost
ravenously for a minute. Then her sudden hunger was
followed by a disgust for the look of the dishes and the
cinders on the tablecloth, and after paying her bill, for which
she waited an intolerable time, she went back to her chair in
the next coach, and watched, with unseeing eyes, the swiftly
moving landscape, which rushed by in all the brilliant
pageantry of October. Several seats ahead of her, two men
were discussing politics, and one of them, who wore a
clerical waistcoat, raised his voice suddenly so high that his
words penetrated the wall of blankness which surrounded
her thoughts, "I tell you it is the greatest menace to our
civilization!" and then, as he controlled his excitement, his
speech dropped quickly into indistinctness.

"How absurd of him to get so angry about it," thought
Virginia with surprise, "as if a civilization could make any
difference to anybody on earth."

And she watched the clergyman for a minute, as if
fascinated by the display of his earnestness. "What on earth
can it matter to him?" she wondered mildly, "and yet to look
at him one would think that his heart was bound up in the
question." But in a little while she turned away from him
again, and lying back in her chair, stared across the smooth
plains to the pale golden edge of the distant horizon.
Through the long day she sat, without moving, without
taking her eyes from the landscape, while the sunlight faded
slowly away from the fields and the afterglow flushed and
waned, and the stars shone out, one by one, through the
silver web of the twilight. Once, when the porter had
offered her a pillow, she had looked round to thank him;
once when a child, toddling along the aisle, had fallen at her
feet, she had bent over to lift it, but beyond this, she had
stirred only to hand her ticket to the conductor when he
aroused her by touching her arm. Where the sunset and the
afterglow had been, she saw at last only the lights of the
train reflected in the smeared glass of the window, but so
unconscious was she of any change in that utter vacancy at
which she looked, that she could not have told whether it
was an hour or a day after leaving New York that she came
back to Dinwiddie. Even then she would still have sat there,
speechless, inert, unseeing, had not the porter taken her bag
from the rack over her head and accompanied her from the
glare of the train out into the dimness of the town, where the
crumbling "hacks" hitched to the decrepit horses still waited.
Here her bag was passed over to a driver, whom she
vaguely remembered, and a few minutes later she rolled, in
one of the ancient

vehicles, under the pale lights of the street which led to
her home. In the drug store at the corner she saw Miss
Priscilla's maid buying medicines, and she wondered indifferently
if the teacher had grown suddenly worse. Then, as she passed
John Henry's house, she recognized his large shadow as it
moved across the white shade at the window of the
drawing-room. "Susan was coming to spend last night with
me," she said aloud, and for the first and last time in her life,
an ironic smile quivered upon her lips.

With a last jolt the carriage drew up at the sidewalk
before her home; the driver dismounted, grinning, from his
box; and in the lighted doorway, she saw the figure of her
maid, in trim cap and apron, waiting to welcome her. Not a
petal had fallen from the bed of crimson dahlias beside the
steps; not a leaf had changed on the young maple tree,
which rose in a spire of flame toward the stars. Inside, she
knew, there would be the bright fire, the cheerful supper
table, the soft bed turned down - and the future.

On the porch she stopped and looked back into the
street as she might have looked back at the door of a
prison. The negro driver, having placed her bag in the hall,
stood waiting expectantly, with his hat in his hand, and his
shining black eyes on her face; and opening her purse, she
paid him, before walking past the maid over the threshold.
Ahead of her stretched the staircase which she would go
up and down for the rest of her life. On the right, she could
look into the open door of the dining-room, and opposite
to it, she knew that the lamp was lit and the fire burning
in Oliver's study. Then, while a wave of despair, like a
mortal sickness, swept over her, her eyes fell on an envelope